Grasping Reality on TypePad, by Brad DeLong

Econ 210a: Memo question for March 16: "Sanford Jacoby on the one hand and Suresh Naidu and Noam Yuchtman on the other...

...paint very different pictures of U.S. labor markets in the 19th century. Describe their differences and explain whether or not you think they can be reconciled.

Econ 210a: Memo question for March 9: "The U.S. and European financial systems developed very differently...

...in the course of the 19th century. What factors – economic, political, historical and other – help to explain their differing evolution and the contrasting financial structures that resulted? How much did these differences matter, and for what?

: Memo question for March 9: Introduction to Economic History: "The U.S. and European financial systems developed very differently in the course of the 19th century. What factors – economic, political, historical and other – help to explain their differing evolution and the contrasting financial structures that resulted? How much did these differences matter, and for what?"

Memo Question for: Commercial and Other Pre-Industrial Economic Revolutions: The January 20 class painted a picture of an economic world in which (a) total factor productivity growth was very slow, and (b) as a result the overwhelming effect of technological progress was to increase human numbers rather than raise standards of living above bare subsistence. This week we read pieces all arguing that very important things were happening in northwestern Europe in 1500-1800 to raise the rate of total factor productivity growth. Pick one paper. Do you think it makes a convincing case? Taking as background January 20's class, how much of a difference in the global economic trend do you think that paper's factors by themselves could have made?

Week 4 Memo Assignment: Slavery and Serfdom: In his Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith confidently asserted that slavery was uneconomic–that in commercial society, manumission was the road to higher productivity because the carrot of working for yourself is much more efficient than the stick of being whipped by others.

He went on to say that unfree labor–slavery, serfdom, debt peonage, and so on–could only survive where the rich chose to pursue not the pleasures of prosperous living but the pleasures of domination–and that as humanity progressed morally and also progressed technologically to invent new commodities this love of domination would decline.

This week we have a number of papers that conclude, as I read them, that Smith was horribly wrong. Can we rescue Smith's optimal, Panglossian view of the historical destiny of unfree labor? Why, in history, didn't Smith's argument work?

• Basecamp page: http://www.bradford-delong.com/introduction-to-economic-history-graduate-basecamp-policy.html
• Syllabus link: http://eml.berkeley.edu/~webfac/eichengreen//e210a_sp14/210a_syl_sp16_1-13-16_FINAL.pdf
• bCourses

For January 27, 2016: The January 20 class painted a picture of an economic world in which (a) total factor productivity growth was very slow, and (b) as a result the overwhelming effect of technological progress was to increase human numbers rather than raise standards of living above bare subsistence.

This week we read pieces all arguing that very important things were happening in northwestern Europe in 1500-1800 to raise the rate of total factor productivity growth. Pick one paper. Do you think it makes a convincing case? Taking as background January 20's class, how much of a difference in the global economic trend do you think that paper's factors by themselves could have made?

For February 3, 2016: Economics tends to view growth as a continuous and diffuse process: if one firm does not solve the problem of how to efficiently utilize resources, others will and drive the first out of business; if one technological vein plays itself out, energy will focus on others.

The papers this week argue different. They argue either that some unique and particular institutions and technologies matter a lot--or, implicitly that they do not, for it is other institutions or technologies or simply the aggregate state of the economy that matters the most. What kinds of evidence not presented in this week's reading might lead you to come down on one or the other of the many, many sides in this debate?

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about cities and economic growth? If not these, what are the right papers?

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about accounting for economic growth? If not these, what are the right papers?

Are these the right five papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about the pre-1800 absence, the 1800-2050 presence, and the possible post-2015 end of what Simon Kuznets termed "modern economic growth"? If not these, what are the right papers?

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about the pre-1800 absence, the 1800-2050 presence, and the possible post-2015 end of what Simon Kuznets termed "modern economic growth"? If not these, what are the right papers?

Are these the right papers for first-year Ph.D. students in Economics to read for their week spent thinking about the Malthusian Economy? If not these, what are the right papers?

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