Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session
Course Overview
We will endeavor to teach you about three things in the course:
- Economic History, in particular, processes like industrialization and demographic change that took a long time, and policies that affected them.
- Applied Economics, emphasizing the great variety of approaches that have been used to formulate and test hypotheses.
- Paper Writing, by examining critically the economic-history literature and giving you an opportunity to practice writing a paper suitable for a professional journal (as some term papers, after revision, have been).
Course Requirements
The assigned reading should be completed before the date noted on the syllabus. Class discussion will be more productive and enjoyable if you have done the reading. There will be a short final exam in the last scheduled class period and a term paper that is due at the end of the semester. Additional details about the paper can be found in the assignments section.
The term paper is the most important part of the written requirement for this subject. Extensions will be given only for unanticipated events. Late papers will receive lowered grades on a gradient that makes passing this course problematical with a paper that is more than a few days late. Plan accordingly.
Calendar
| LEC # | TOPICS |
|---|---|
| Agrarian Economies and the Industrial Revolution | |
| 1 | Ancient Rome |
| 2 | Early Modern Europe |
| 3 | European Expansion |
| 4 | Malthusian Demography |
| 5 | The Demographic Transition |
| 6 | English Financial Institutions |
| 7 | The Industrial Revolution: Description |
| 8 | The Industrial Revolution: Analysis |
| The Spread of Industrialization | |
| 9 | Northern Europe |
| 10 | Southern Europe |
| 11 | Africa |
| 12 | Ottoman and Russian Empires |
| 13 | China |
| 14 | Japan |
| 15 | Latin America |
| The United States | |
| 16 | Industrialization in the North |
| 17 | The South and Slavery |
| 18 | The Aftermath of Slavery |
| 19 | Labor Participation |
| 20 | The Modern Corporation |
| The Twentieth Century | |
| 21 | The Great Depression |
| 22 | Recovery |
| 23 | The Economics of Wars |
| 24 | Assessing U.S. Growth |
| 25 | Inequality |
| Final Exam | |
