The transformation of Australian economic and social history

This article reviews the first four books published in a new Australian series entitled ‘Themes in Australian Economic and Social History’. These volumes include: A. Dingle, Aboriginal economy: patterns of experience; R.V. Jackson, The population history of Australia; W. Bate, Victorian gold rushes; A.L. Lougheed, Australia and the world economy. The series is edited by C.B. Schedvin in association with the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand and is published by McPhee Gribble Publishers, Melbourne. Each attractively presented book is approximately seventy pages long and is priced at $9.99. Further volumes in this series have been commissioned.     

Business history as economic history

Abstract

Since economic history became established as an academic discipline in the Swedish universities in the 1950s, more than ISO doctoral dissertations have been published. Of these, about 10% can be characterized as business monographs, while roughly another 10% deal with aspects of trade and industry, relying mainly on business archives. Business history, accordingly, has become an established part of economic history in Sweden. Most of the literature dealing with the history of firms does not, however, appear in the form of doctoral theses, a wide range of books has been published, from sometimes heavy, academic works by established scholars, to glossy anniversary pamphlets lacking scholarly interest.¹     

On women's history and economic history

Abstract

Women's history at the university level can be seen as an interdisciplinary movement, with researchers working in disciplines other than history itself, such as the history of ideas, sociology, anthropology and literature, among others. My initial wish here was to give a broad overview of the state of women's history in Sweden today, but this would have involved too long a discourse.¹ But it needs to be stressed that the connections across the usual boundaries of the academic disciplines are many.²     

The economic history of Thailand

The article, which is a first step in writing a general economic history of Thailand, highlights the marked discontinuities between stagnation and growth, mono–crop culture and diversification, which occurred around the 1950s. While many factors were involved, an underlying theme was the transition from ‘expensive’ to ‘cheap’ labour caused by population growth and the closing of the rice frontier.     

Citation success: Evidence from economic history journal publications

This study examines the determinants of citation success among authors who have recently published their work in economic history journals. Besides offering clues about how to improve one's scientific impact, our citation analysis also sheds light on the state of the field of economic history. Consistent with our expectations, we find that full professors, authors appointed at economics and history departments, and authors working in Anglo-Saxon and German countries are more likely to receive citations than other scholars. Long and co-authored articles are also a factor for citation success. We find similar patterns when assessing the same authors' citation success in economics journals. As a novel feature, we demonstrate that the diffusion of research — publication of working papers, as well as conference and workshop presentations — has a first-order positive impact on the citation rate.     

Agrarian history as a sub-field of Swedish economic history

Abstract

During the first half of this century a main interest in international economic history was the focus on towns and trade. This path of research derived support from both Adam Smith and Karl Marx, as well as, for example, Karl Bücher in the late 19th century and, of course, Henri Pirenne in the early 20th century.     

Social history as economic history in Sweden. Some remarks

Abstract

During the last two decades social history as a subject has developed rapidly, with regard both to the number of its practicioners as well as the general interest it attracts within the international academic community. In a book of some years ago D.C. Coleman even emphasized that its success has been so great that it has had a tendency to outcompete discourses of older and more distinguished standing; that is, political history as well as economic history. In several countries — particularly Britain — social history has acquired its own departments, and has thus created problems for the older and less buoyant disciplines which have had to compete with this vital and growing new subject for funding and students.¹     

Collider bias in economic history research

Economic historians have long been aware of many forms of bias that could lead to spurious causal inferences. However, our approach to these biases has been muddled at times by dealing with each bias separately and by confusion about the sources of bias and how to mitigate them. This paper shows how the methodology of directed acyclical graphs (DAGs) formulated by Pearl (2009) and particularly the concept of collider bias can provide economic historians with a unified approach to managing a wide range of biases that can distort causal inference. I present ten examples of collider bias drawn from economic history research, focussing mainly on examples where the authors were able to overcome or mitigate the bias. Thus, the paper addresses how to diagnose collider bias and also strategies for managing it. The paper also shows that quasi-random experimental designs are rarely able to overcome collider bias. Although all of these biases were understood by economic historians before, conceptualising them as collider bias will improve economic historians’ understanding of the limitations of particular sources and help us develop better research designs in the future.     

A finnish textbook in economic history

Abstract

There is, to my knowledge, no work exactly corresponding to Professor Jutikkala's in any of the major languages. Uudenajan taloushistoria is a comprehensive and very skilful exposition of the economic development of the modern world and certainly much more than simply a good textbook in which material from generally recognized standard works, partial surveys, and particular investigations is brought together and rearranged. However much Professor jutikkala may have drawn upon the available modern literature, upon the writings of Heckscher, Clapham, Cole, Ashton, Ashley, Sombart, and other authorities, his book is stamped first and foremost by his own great familiarity with the vast field of his subject, by his own research and experience-especially in the field of agrarian and social history—and by his great versatility as a scholar. The author is not simply a historian with an economic training; he is also very conscious of the fact that economic development never occurs in society in forms which allow of a purely economic exposition. His method is—to     

中国经济学术史的重点考察--中国经济思想史学科创始与发展优势论析

本文系笔者近年来倡导并获准立项的中国经济学术史研究的一个重点考察。文章试图进行初步的学理阐述，基于大约120年以来中外相关文献的发掘梳理，首次重点考证中国经济思想史这一独具特性的学科在世界范围内的发端与发展，论述中国和日本相关研究的具体状况与研究内容，考察国人在不同历史时期进行该学科研究的代表性成果和主要学术特点，进而阐释中国经济思想史惟独在中国大陆作为理论经济学独立学科的特殊优势与发展前景，探寻丰富和发展传统汉学与理论经济学、经济史学的创新途径。     

The state in Chinese economic history

We survey the recent economics and history literature on the Chinese state to investigate its role in China's long-term socioeconomic development. We highlight three insights. First, unlike in Europe, where interstate competition helped give rise to capitalist states with high capacity, the Chinese state emerged from a different historical context. Second, the 18th- and 19th-century Chinese state does not fit into the mould of a strong and extractive Oriental despotic state as once commonly believed. By conventional measures, early modern China had a weak state. Third, state building and centre-local relations are two useful dimensions to understand development and change in China's recent history and political economy. To adapt China to a changing world, Chinese state builders embarked on a long process of state building from the late-19th century through the Republican and Communist eras. Facilitated partly by regional decentralisation, the process now sees the Chinese state playing a substantially larger role in the economy and everyday life than any previous time in history.     

Segmenting the contours: Australian economic growth 1828–1913

The statistical properties of Australian GDP estimates are used to investigate discontinuities in economic growth between 1828 and 1913. Australian GDP appears to follow a segmented trend stationary process, with discontinuities around 1851 and 1891. The results are used to shed light on the impact of the 1851 gold discoveries and the 1890s depression on Australian economic development.