An Econo-mist’s Guide to Economic History
by Matthias Blum  (Editor), Christopher L. Colvin  (Editor)

About the Author
Matthias Blum and Christopher L. Colvin are economic historians based at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. Blum has research interests in measurement, health and wellbeing, and economic development in the long-run. Colvin works on historical banking crises, corporate governance and the economics of religion. Besides teaching and supervising students in economic history, they always make a point of incorporating historical thinking into the other field courses they teach, including econometrics, development economics, industrial organisation and managerial economics.  

About this book
Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding 'how we got here'. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past.
This important and unique book addresses this problem by demonstrating the power of historical thinking in economic research. Concise chapters guide economics lecturers and their students through the field of economic history, demonstrating the use of historical thinking in economic research, and advising them on how they can actively engage with economic history in their teaching and learning.
Blum and Colvin bring together important voices in the field to show readers how they can use their existing economics training to explore different facets of economic history. Each chapter introduces a question or topic, historical context or research method and explores how they can be used in economics scholarship and pedagogy. In a century characterised to date by economic uncertainty, bubbles and crashes, An Econo-mist's Guide to Economic History is essential reading.

Brief contents
1. Introduction, or Why We Started This Project
Part I.
2. Economics Versus History
3. Economics, Economic History and Historical Data
4. Economic Theory and Economic History
5. Economic History and the Policymaker
6. Economic History, the History of Economic Thought and Economic Policy
7. Teaching Economics with Economic History
Part II.
8. Money and Central Banking
9. Globalisation and Trade
10. Immigration and Labour Markets
11. Financial Institutions and Markets
12. Financial Crises and Bubbles
13. Sovereign Debt and State Financing
14. Health and Development
15. Education and Human Capital
16. Famine and Disease
17. Women and Children
18. Slavery and Discrimination
19. Crime and Violence
20. Business Ownership and Organisation
21. Competition and Collusion
22. Human Resources and Incentive Contracts
23. Global Divergence and Economic Change
24. Industrial Revolution and British Exceptionalism
25. Innovation and Technical Change
26. Culture and Religion
27. Agriculture and Rural Development
28. Environment and Natural Resources
Part III.
29. Economic Prehistory
30. The World Wars
31. Western Europe
32. Central and Eastern Europe
33. Sub-Saharan Africa
34. South Asia
35. East Asia
36. Australasia
37. North America
38. Latin America
Part IV.
39. Impact and Communication
40. Publishing Economic History
41. Archival Evidence
42. Case Studies
43. Analytic Narratives
44. Measurement and Metrics
45. Econometric Identification
46. Historical National Accounting
47. Productivity, Innovation and Social Savings
48. Frontier Analysis
49. Geospatial Information Systems
50. Network Analysis

Series: Palgrave Studies in Economic History
Length: 508 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2018 edition (December 8, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 3319965670
ISBN-13: 978-3319965673

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