Two interesting recent papers in economic history

Here are two papers that have recently caught my eye.  They show the gains that can be made from applying (relatively) recent advances in economic theory and econometrics to historical data.

First there is paper by Maarten Bosker, Eltjo Buringh, and Jan Luiten van Zanden  entitled From Bagdad to London which applies techniques developed in the new economic geography to try and explain the growth of cities in the 1000 years froim 800 and 1800 i.e. why the world's largest and richest city went from being Bagdad to being London. I saw an early version of the paper at a conference in 2007. Maarten Bosker is presenting the latest version in Oxford this term and I'm looking foward to seeing the finished product. The author promise to 'test two hypotheses concerning the divergent development of Western Europe versus the Arab World':

'Firstly, the Greif hypothesis focuses on the differences in the efficiency of institutions regulating exchange, predicting that interaction between cities in Western Europe was more efficient than between similar cities in the Arab World. Secondly, the North hypothesis on the role of institutions constraining the behavior of the state implies that the explanation is that political institutions in Western Europe were more efficient than in the Middle East.'

The paper documents quite how different the Middle Eastern and European urban systems were. This clearly has important implications for the Great Divergence debate.

The second paper is by Dave Donaldson a job market candidate at the LSE which examines the effect of the massive railway building project carried out by the British in India in the second-half of the nineteenth century. It really raises the bar in terms of technique. The paper shows how the new railway network linked together previously more or less autarkic regions, leading to gains from trade and price convergence but also increased transmission of shocks from one region to another.  One thing I liked about it is that the IV estimation is plausible because it is carefully motivated by the author's historical analysis and counterfactual which makes for a change.

 

Comments

[Maharbbal]

Hi,

I am not sure I agree with your enthusiastic comments of Maarten Bosker, Eltjo Buringh, and Jan Luiten van Zanden's paper. Granted some insights are interesting and warrant by themselves an article (in particular the reshuffling of Pirenne's these on the impact of the Muslim invasions).

But somehow it leaves a very unsatisfying taste. In particular there is no attempt to build a hierarchy of the causes of urban dynamism in the two systems. Besides, the institutional aspect of their analysis is bordering malpractice (putting the delicate republican balance of Venice and Medieval serfdom in the same package is odd to say the least).

Anyway thanks a lot for the blog.

B