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374 books match the query 'Economic History' and 15 start with h

cover of Harmony and the Balance: An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought

Harmony and the Balance

An Intellectual History of Seventeenth-Century English Economic Thought

Andrea Finkelstein

University of Michigan Press, 2000

Frequently the achievements of pioneering economic writers are assessed by imposing contemporary theories of markets, economics, politics, and history. At last, here is a book that appraises the work of the leading English economic writers of the seventeenth century using intellectual concepts of the time, rather than present-day analytical models, in order to place their economic theories in context. In an analysis that tracks the Stuart century, Andrea Finkelstein traces the progress of such figures as Gerard de Malynes, William Petty, John Locke, and Charles Davenant by inviting us into the great trading companies and halls of parliament where we relive the debates over the coinage, the interest rate, and the nature of money. Furthermore, we see them model their works on the latest developments in physiology, borrow ideas from bookkeeping, and argue over the nature of numbers in an effort to construct a market theory grounded in objective moral value. This comprehensive approach clarifies the relationship between the century's economic ideas and its intellectual thought so that, in the end, readers will be able to judge for themselves whether this really was the age of the Capitalist Geist.
 
Finkelstein has crafted her book to be both inclusive and interdisciplinary by skillfully integrating biography, political history, economic history, and intellectual theory as well as the economic heritage of its subjects. While the concepts are far from simple, Finkelstein's adroit style presents her analysis in an extremely accessible manner.

Andrea Finkelstein is Assistant Professor of History, City University of New York.
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cover of Hawai'i: Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change

Hawai'i

Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change

Sumner La Croix

University of Chicago Press, 2019

Relative to the other habited places on our planet, Hawai‘i has a very short history. The Hawaiian archipelago was the last major land area on the planet to be settled, with Polynesians making the long voyage just under a millennium ago. Our understanding of the social, political, and economic changes that have unfolded since has been limited until recently by how little we knew about the first five centuries of settlement.

Building on new archaeological and historical research, Sumner La Croix assembles here the economic history of Hawai‘i from the first Polynesian settlements in 1200 through US colonization, the formation of statehood, and to the present day. He shows how the political and economic institutions that emerged and evolved in Hawai‘i during its three centuries of global isolation allowed an economically and culturally rich society to emerge, flourish, and ultimately survive annexation and colonization by the United States. The story of a small, open economy struggling to adapt its institutions to changes in the global economy, Hawai‘i offers broadly instructive conclusions about economic evolution and development, political institutions, and native Hawaiian rights.
 
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cover of Hayek and the Evolution of Capitalism

Hayek and the Evolution of Capitalism

Naomi Beck

University of Chicago Press, 2018

Few economists can claim the influence—or fame—of F. A. Hayek. Winner of the Nobel Prize, Hayek was one of the most consequential thinkers of the twentieth century, his views on the free market echoed by such major figures as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
 
Yet even among those who study his work in depth, few have looked closely at his use of ideas from evolutionary science to advance his vision of markets and society. With this book Naomi Beck offers the first full-length engagement with Hayek’s thought from this perspective. Hayek argued that the capitalism we see in advanced civilizations is an unintended consequence of group selection—groups that adopted free market behavior expanded more successfully than others. But this attempt at a scientific grounding for Hayek’s principles, Beck shows, fails to hold water, plagued by incoherencies, misinterpretations of the underlying science, and lack of evidence. As crises around the globe lead to reconsiderations of the place of capitalism, Beck’s excavation of this little-known strand of Hayek’s thought—and its failure—is timely and instructive.
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cover of Hayek on Mill: The Mill-Taylor Friendship and Related Writings

Hayek on Mill

The Mill-Taylor Friendship and Related Writings

F. A. Hayek

University of Chicago Press, 2015

Best known for reviving the tradition of classical liberalism, F. A. Hayek was also a prominent scholar of the philosopher John Stuart Mill. One of his greatest undertakings was a collection of Mill’s extensive correspondence with his longstanding friend and later companion and wife, Harriet Taylor-Mill. Hayek first published the Mill-Taylor correspondence in 1951, and his edition soon became required reading for any study of the nineteenth-century foundations of liberalism.
           
This latest addition to the University of Chicago Press’s Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series showcases the fascinating intersections between two of the most prominent thinkers from two successive centuries. Hayek situates Mill within the complex social and intellectual milieu of nineteenth-century Europe—as well as within twentieth-century debates on socialism and planning—and uncovers the influence of Taylor-Mill on Mill’s political economy. The volume features the Mill-Taylor correspondence and brings together for the first time Hayek’s related writings, which were widely credited with beginning a new era of Mill scholarship.
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cover of Hayek's The Road to Serfdom: A Brief Introduction

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

A Brief Introduction

Bruce Caldwell

University of Chicago Press, 2013

The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek’s 1944 warning against the dangers of government control, continues to influence politics more than seventy years after it was turned down by three American publishers and finally published by the University of Chicago Press. A classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and cultural history, and economics, the definitive edition of The Road to Serfdom included this essay as its Introduction. Here, acclaimed Hayek biographer and general editor of the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series, Bruce Caldwell explains how Hayek came to write and publish the book, assesses misunderstandings of Hayek’s thought, and suggests how Hayek’s fears of Socialism lead him to abandon the larger scholarly project he had planned in 1940 to focus instead on a briefer, more popular and political tract—one that has influenced political and economic discourse ever since.
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cover of Health and Welfare during Industrialization

Health and Welfare during Industrialization

Edited by Richard H. Steckel and Roderick Floud

University of Chicago Press, 1997

In this unique anthology, Steckel and Floud coordinate ten essays that bring a new perspective to inquiry about standard of living in modern times. These papers are arranged for international comparison, and they individually examine evidence of health and welfare during and after industrialization in eight countries: the United States, Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Japan, and Australia.
The essays incorporate several indicators of quality of life, especially real per capita income and health, but also real wages, education, and inequality. And while the authors use traditional measures of health such as life expectancy and mortality rates, this volume stands alone in its extensive use of new "anthropometric" data—information about height, weight and body mass index that indicates changes in nations' well-being. Consequently, Health and Welfare during Industrialization signals a new direction in economic history, a broader and more thorough understanding of what constitutes standard of living.
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cover of History of Economic Thought

History of Economic Thought

Isaac Ilyich Rubin

Pluto Press, 1987

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cover of House Money: A History of the American Mortgage Market

House Money

A History of the American Mortgage Market

Jonathan D. Rose and Kenneth Snowden

University of Chicago Press, 0

How the market that made the American Dream was made—and what that history tells us about its future and fluctuations.

When Americans poured into cities and suburbs during the twentieth century, they needed capital to build and own homes. The market that emerged did more than merely provide it: the American mortgage market became the consequential, if occasionally misunderstood, cornerstone of the US financial system.

House Money traces the history of the growth and occasional collapse of the American mortgage market over the last 150 years. Jonathan Rose and Kenneth Snowden show how three major housing-related crises (of the 1930s, 1980s, and 2000s) were not just cyclical events nor bubbles. Rather, they were episodes in a common pattern: shocks produced when the availability of capital in the market was eclipsed by the risk the market took on. Rose and Snowden chart the macro factors that produced these capital/risk asymmetries, showing that in all three crises, the macroeconomic trends—not just bubbles, not banker avarice—conspired to create a downturn despite federal and private safeguards. This illustrates Rose and Snowden’s core principle: housing markets can (and often, must) shoulder considerable risk. When the capital behind that risk evaporates, trouble becomes more likely.

Mining more than a century of economic history, Rose and Snowden show how the institutions and practices in the American mortgage market reflect the push-pulls of its past—both the private innovations and the government interventions. House Money reveals the great risk undertaken in service to American homeownership—and the perennial question of what happens when that risk goes wrong.

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cover of Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective

Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective

Edited by Eugene N. White, Kenneth Snowden, and Price V. Fishback

University of Chicago Press, 2014

The central role of the housing market in the recent recession raised a series of questions about similar episodes throughout economic history. Were the underlying causes of housing and mortgage crises the same in earlier episodes? Has the onset and spread of crises changed over time? How have previous policy interventions either damaged or improved long-run market performance and stability?

This volume begins to answer these questions, providing a much-needed context for understanding recent events by examining how historical housing and mortgage markets worked—and how they sometimes failed. Renowned economic historians Eugene N. White, Kenneth Snowden, and Price Fishback survey the foundational research on housing crises, comparing that of the 1930s to that of the early 2000s in order to authoritatively identify what contributed to each crisis. Later chapters explore notable historical experiences with mortgage securitization and the role that federal policy played in the surge in home ownership between 1940 and 1960. By providing a broad historical overview of housing and mortgage markets, the volume offers valuable new insights to inform future policy debates.
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cover of How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality

How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind

The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality

Paul Erickson, Judy L. Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm, and Michael D. Gordin

University of Chicago Press, 2013

In the United States at the height of the Cold War, roughly between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, a new project of redefining rationality commanded the attention of sharp minds, powerful politicians, wealthy foundations, and top military brass. Its home was the human sciences—psychology, sociology, political science, and economics, among others—and its participants enlisted in an intellectual campaign to figure out what rationality should mean and how it could be deployed.
           
How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind brings to life the people—Herbert Simon, Oskar Morgenstern, Herman Kahn, Anatol Rapoport, Thomas Schelling, and many others—and places, including the RAND Corporation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the Cowles Commission for Research and Economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations, that played a key role in putting forth a “Cold War rationality.” Decision makers harnessed this picture of rationality—optimizing, formal, algorithmic, and mechanical—in their quest to understand phenomena as diverse as economic transactions, biological evolution, political elections, international relations, and military strategy. The authors chronicle and illuminate what it meant to be rational in the age of nuclear brinkmanship.
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cover of How Revolutions Happen

How Revolutions Happen

Konstantin Sonin

University of Chicago Press, 0

From the Russian intellectual-in-exile Konstantin Sonin, a grand theory of when and how rapid political change happens—or doesn’t.

In 2015, economist Konstantin Sonin solidified his status as an enemy of the Russian state when he published an article predicting that Vladimir Putin’s presidency would produce the country’s third revolution by the middle of this century. Forced to flee the country, Sonin settled in Chicago. In the decade that followed, the Russian government continued to pursue him—placing him on their state wanted list, tracking his movements, and sentencing him in absentia to eight years in prison. Sonin’s research and political advocacy continued unabated. So did his writing.

Now, Sonin has completed his masterpiece: a revelatory and sweeping investigation of a timeless question—what makes a revolution? How Revolutions Happen pinpoints why they arise, why they don’t, and where they’re likely to occur next. Tracing examples of successful and failed examples from history—in China, France, Haiti, Ukraine—Sonin shows that revolutions don’t grow out of mere popular unrest; they happen when states cease to evolve. This argument extends well beyond why nations fail, considering also why nations almost fail and why other nations fail repeatedly. Drawing on both empirical evidence and his firsthand experience, he also argues that although revolutions are an important part of human societies, they are not inherently good or bad—or quick to end.

Wry, sweeping, and erudite, How Revolutions Happen recasts everything we think about political change. From one of the world’s foremost political economists, this book is a momentous cumulation of knowledge that allows us to fully understand what a revolution is, why they occurred in the past—and how to measure where they might be coming.

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cover of How the Dismal Science Got Its Name: Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics

How the Dismal Science Got Its Name

Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics

David M. Levy

University of Michigan Press, 2002

It is widely asserted that the Victorian sages attacked classical economics from a humanistic or egalitarian perspective, calling it "the dismal science," and that their attack is relevant to modern discussions of market society. David M. Levy here demonstrates that these assertions are simply false: political economy became "dismal" because Carlyle, Ruskin, and Dickens were horrified at the idea that systems of slavery were being replaced by systems in which individuals were allowed to choose their own paths in life. At a minimum, they argued, "we" white people ought to be directing the lives of "them," people of color.
Economists of the time argued, on the other hand, that people of color were to be protected by the rule of law--hence the moniker "the dismal science."
A startling image from 1893, which is reproduced in full color on this book's jacket, shows Ruskin killing someone who appears to be nonwhite. A close look reveals that the victim is reading "The Dismal Science."
Levy discusses this image at length and also includes in his text weblinks to Carlyle's "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question" and to Mill's response, demonstrating that these are central documents in British classical economics. He explains Adam Smith's egalitarian foundations, contrasting Smith's approach to the hierarchical alternative proposed by Carlyle. Levy also examines various visual representations of this debate and provides an illuminating discussion of Smith's "katallactics," the science of exchange, comparing it with the foundations of modern neoclassical economics.
How the Dismal Science Got Its Name also introduces the notion of "rational choice scholarship" to explain how attacks on market economics from a context in which racial slavery was idealized have been interpreted as attacks on market economics from a humanistic or egalitarian context. Thus it will greatly appeal to economists, political scientists, philosophers, students of Victorian literature, and historians.
David M. Levy is Associate Professor of Economics and Research Associate, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University.
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cover of How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism

How the West Came to Rule

The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism

Alex Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu

Pluto Press, 2015

***Winner, International Studies Association International Political Sociology Best Book Prize 2017***
***Winner, British International Studies Association International Political Economy Working Group Book Prize 2016***
 
Mainstream historical accounts of the development of capitalism describe a profess which is fundamentally European—a system that was born in the mills and factories of English and under the guillotines of the French Revolution. This groundbreaking book tells a very difference story.
 
How the West Came to Rule offers a unique interdisciplinary and international historical account of the origins of capitalism. It argues that, contrary to dominant wisdom, capitalism’s origins should not be understood as a development confined to the geographically and culturally sealed borders of Europe, but the outcome of a wider array of global processes in which non-European societies played a decisive role.
 
Here is a provocative, incisive explanation of how capitalism emerged in England and Europe through a dialectical intersocietal and geopolitical process. The authors’ aim to undermine a Eurocentric bias that has been prominent in the debate about capitalisms rise to supremacy, and their case is remarkably convincing. They provide a fundamental rethinking. Anievas and Nisancioglu contend that often cited assumptions are neither theoretically nor empirically tenable and deny the agency of non-Western societies to the emergence of capitalism. Topics covered include:
 
*The Problem of Eurocentrism
*The Problem of Historical Specificity
*The Brenner Thesis: Explanation and Critique
*The Geopolitical in the Making of Capitalism
*The Political Marxist Conception of Capitalism
*Rethinking the Origins of Capitalism
*And much more!
 
Through an outline of the uneven histories of Mongolian expansion, New World discoveries, Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry, the development of the colonies, and bourgeois revolutions, Alex Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu offer an account of capitalism’s origins that convincingly argues against the prevailing Eurocentric narratives. It will change minds and open the eyes of historians, economists, and political thinkers.
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cover of Human Capital in History: The American Record

Human Capital in History

The American Record

Edited by Leah Platt Boustan, Carola Frydman, and Robert A. Margo

University of Chicago Press, 2014

America’s expansion to one of the richest nations in the world was partly due to a steady increase in labor productivity, which in turn depends upon the invention and deployment of new technologies and on investments in both human and physical capital. The accumulation of human capital—the knowledge and skill of workers—has featured prominently in American economic leadership over the past two centuries.
           
Human Capital in History brings together contributions from leading researchers in economic history, labor economics, the economics of education, and related fields. Building on Claudia Goldin’s landmark research on the labor history of the United States, the authors consider the roles of education and technology in contributing to American economic growth and well-being, the experience of women in the workforce, and how trends in marriage and family affected broader economic outcomes. The volume provides important new insights on the forces that affect the accumulation of human capital.
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cover of Humanism Challenges Materialism in Economics and Economic History

Humanism Challenges Materialism in Economics and Economic History

Edited by Roderick Floud, Santhi Hejeebu, and David Mitch

University of Chicago Press, 2016

Most of the existing research on economic history relies either solely or ultimately on calculations of material interest to explain the major events of the modern world. However, care must be taken not to rely too heavily on materialism, with its associated confidence in perfectly rational actors that simply do not exist. What is needed for a more cogent understanding of the long history of capitalist growth is a more realistic, human-centered approach that can take account of the role of nonmaterial values and beliefs, an approach convincingly articulated by Deirdre McCloskey in her landmark trilogy of books on the moral and ethical basis of modern economic life.

With Humanism Challenges Materialism in Economics and Economic History, Roderick Floud, Santhi Hejeebu, and David Mitch have brought together a distinguished group of scholars in economics, economic history, political science, philosophy, gender studies, and communications who synthesize and build on McCloskey’s work. The essays in this volume illustrate the ways in which the humanistic approach to economics that McCloskey pioneered can open up new vistas for the study of economic history and cultivate rich synergies with a wide range of disciplines. The contributors show how values and beliefs become embedded in the language of economics and shape economic outcomes. Chapters on methodology are accompanied by case studies discussing particular episodes in economic history.
 
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