Krugman P. (1991) Geography and trade

Krugman, Paul (1991) Geography and trade, London: MIT Press/Leuven UP, p.142.

Introduction

Economic geography is devoted to understand the location of production in space, in other words where things happen in relation to one another (p.1). Economists ought to remember that countries both occupy and exist in space (p.2). “To say anything useful or interesting about the location of economic activity in space, it is necessary to get away from the constant-returns, perfect-competition approach that still dominates most economy analysis”, and use such notions as increasing returns and imperfect competition (p.4).

Hoffman P., Postel-Vinay G. and Rosenthal J.-L. (1992) Private credit market in Paris

Hoffman, Philip T., Postel-Vinay, Gilles, and Rosenthal, Jean-Laurent (1992) “Private Credit Markets in Paris, 1690-1840”, The Journal of Economic History, 52/2, 293-306.

Introduction

In Ancien Régime France, “credit assumed such importance that, as one historian suggest, an 18th-century person’s very reputation was bound up with his ability to obtain loans.” Until the late 19th century, the usual intermediaries on the credit market were not banks but notaries (p.294). Notarial offices recorded families’ transactions for generations, notaries thus enjoyed a unique ability to access information on the parties’ financial history. Their intimate knowledge of a person’s position allowed them to match borrowers and lenders, often on short notice.

Hoppit J. (1986) Financial crises in 18th-century England

Hoppit, Julian (1986) “Financial Crises in Eighteenth-Century England”, The Economic History Review, 39/1, 39-58.

Introduction

“Because the financial system in the 18th century was evolving and becoming more sophisticated, […] the nature of crises developed and changed”. Historians have long disagreed on the very definition of what constituted a crisis in early modern England (p.40). The author defines a crisis as a moment when expectations change leading owners of wealth to abandon a type of asset for another leading to the falls in prices of the former. The more widely available the newly-sought asset is, the lesser the crisis.

Moral code

A brillant exposé, which should inspire every economic historians. I’m thinking in particular about the culturalist debate. The ethics of any given socio-economic group is buit around a set of rules appealing to the mechanisms described by Dan Ariely. That’s what people like A. Grief fail to take into account. Men are hard-wired in such way that cold blooded rationalization out is not the way we think.

Some goodies

A few cool addresses:

Arthur Young’s voyage in France (french on Gutenberg project).

and the Yale’s Econ 252, by Pr. R. Shiller on financial markets.

Goldstone J. (2003) Agricultural Revolution in China

Goldstone, Jack A. (2003) “Feeding the people, starving the state: China’s Agricultural Revolution of the 17th/18th Centuries”, paper for the EHES Istanbul conference, 43p.

This article is available online

Introduction

The Chinese population jumped from 120 to 350 million between 1620 and 1800. Many historians have assumed that the necessary growth of the agricultural output had been reached through a process of “involution” (i.e. not through gains in labour productivity, but thanks to increased effort; p.1). This stagnation of the output per person has been seen as the reverse of what happened in England at the same time: the agricultural revolution (p.2).

North D.C. (1959) Agriculture and economic growth

North, Douglass C. (1959) “Agriculture and Regional Economic Growth”, Journal of Farm Economics, 41/5, 943-951.

Introduction
“There seems to be agreement amongst economist that agriculture contributes little to economic growth”. Worse it may even delay development as agricultural comparative advantage may attract production factors away from the most moderns sectors of the economy. At best, progress in agriculture is seen as a consequence rather than a cause of urban and industrial development (p.943). But the author argues that “the successful production of agricultural (or indeed most extractive) commodities for sale [outside of] the region can be and under certain conditions has been the prime influence inducing economic growth […] and eventually industrial development”.

Did the Italian bankers make it because they were good looking?

…well, this article from The Economist allow us to ask the question.

If trustwortiness can be assessed based on one’s look, well maybe the Italian bankers looked particularly good. Of course I am joking, but this type of study shows how important modern foreys in the human brain can be for Economic History. Lets say it as I see it: Economic History should become an experimental science.

Here is the original article.

Rainmakers in South East Asia

This week in The Economist

from http://www.flickr.com/photos/mytripsmypics/1655115004

Climatology

Historical determinism

Mar 12th 2009 | DALAT

THE idea that climate change will lead to war is often raised by environmental pessimists, and a meeting on the climatic past of South-East Asia, held last month in Dalat, Vietnam, suggests it is not such an unlikely thought. The meeting was organised by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University, some of whose researchers have been trying to reconstruct the pattern of South-East Asia’s monsoons over the past few centuries. One matter they raised was the possibility that two periods of conflict in the area, in the 15th and 18th centuries, were provoked by droughts.

Mitchener K. and Ohnuki M. (2009) Capital integration in Japan

Mitchener, Kris James and Ohnuki, Mari (2009) “Institutions, competition and capital market integration in Japan”, The Journal of Economic History, 69/1, 138-171.

Introduction

The causal relationship between finance and economic growth makes “understanding the factors that encourage capital market development […] a key question” (p.138). Meiji-era policy-maker recognized that “the geographical mobility of capital [was] critical to allocative efficiency” and that to modernize the economy they had to forge an integrated capital market (p.139).

Blanchard I. (1986) The 16th-century European cattle trade

Blanchard, Ian (1986) “The Continental European Cattle Trades, 1400-1600”, The Economic History Review, 39/3, 427-460.

Introduction

The European international cattle trade arose in the 1470s out of a “context of a network of regional markets” for locally grazed animals (p.428). Antwerp for instance drew its supplies mostly from Zealand and Holland. The diminutive livestock trade was limited to the Hungarian exports to Venice and some Rhenish towns (Frankfurt, Cologne; p.429). “As gold production recovered in Hungary during the second quarter of the 15th century, […] the economy was subject to the dual pressures of a hard exchange and an excessive money supply which caused its export products to be overpriced on international market and turned a previously strong balance of trade into a decidedly weak one” (p.430). The northern Polish (Breslau, Poznan, Gniezno) products partly replaced the Hungarian cattle after the 1420s, they were exported through the fair of Leipzig. The Hungarian solely retained the south European markets.

Gelderblom O. (2005) The decline of fairs and merchant guilds

Gelderblom, Oscar (2005) “The decline of Fairs and Merchant Guilds in the Low Countries, 1250-1650″, Economy and Society in the Low Countries before 1850, Working Paper 1, 47p.

This article is available on line

Between the 11th and 13th century, during the Commercial Revolution, long-distance trade in Europe expanded rapidly thanks to organizational improvements such as fairs and merchant guilds (p.1). In fairs, merchants increased their chance to find business partners and benefited from the protection and the contract-enforcement abilities of the local jurisdictions. Merchant guilds were associations of traders from the same origin present in a foreign market and united in order to increase their bargain power with local authorities (p.2).