There have been several recent papers which might be called the ‘Economic History of Science’ but I think this new one is the first true thoroughbred to dash out of the starting stall:

A network analysis tracing how discrete scientific ideas diffused amongst scholars through their academic affiliations in the period 1084-1793. An ‘epidemiological’ model of how ideas spread like disease.


They make 3 substantive tests of their model using botany, astronomy, and Scholasticism. I found the two last more interesting historically. They trace the ‘movement’ of the ideas of Regiomontaus in mathematical astronomy within the network, from scholar to scholar, from institution to institution, from city to city; and correlate this with the building of astronomical observatories!

On Old Twitter there was a big, long exchange on why African wages (facing export manufacturers) were so high (compared with e.g. Bangladesh). One answer was, African staple food prices were so high.

A brilliant paper addressing that issue historically over the 20th century:

Countries trying to industrialise face a classic dilemma — support farmers (a big share of the population & likely important political constituency) with high prices, or support urban workers (important in industrialisation, and also a constituency) with low food prices.

.@antonhowes's new theory of the IR: Henry VIII destroys the economy via coinage debasement & inflation. Structural adjustment programme: debasement reversed by accumulating silver via structural trade surpluses via export promotion which had long-term consequences for innovation

https://twitter.com/BrianCAlbrecht/status/1950205218676678988

( It's interesting that just like Anton @joefrancis505 relies on a sensible mercantilism, as opposed to the decadent, excessive mercantilism of the 18th c attacked by Smith -- sensible mercantilism being the simple proposition that 'a currency based on specie needs specie!' )

Glad to see Yuzuru's paper forthcoming

Argument: Tokugawa Japan had relatively low land inequality, which made people exceptionally poor, whereas W. Europe was much more unequal which gave it higher living standards. (This may seem paradoxical to some people but it's not really)
( Should be noted: peasant ownership of land was de facto, not de jure. Technically lords owned the land, and collected rents = tax, but peasants had the de facto right to transact with that land, including sale, lease, etc. )

Many people are tweeting this paper, because it is forthcoming in QJE. The big splashy headline results are being tweeted. But there are a few things from the guts of the paper that many people may not realise. (1) Educational expansion in 1980-2019 ‘explains’ more growth if growth rates were lower. So education ‘explains’ the most in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa & rich countries, the relatively low-growth regions. Ed. explains the least in fast-growing countries like China & India

Listened to Sinica podcast with Tooze who is totally agog over China, even learning Chinese currently at HSK-2

Tooze seems totally incurious about the great puzzle: why have other countries not grown like China, what exactly has China done that other countries cannot imitate? ( that’s a rhetorical question, if you post your own answer you’re blocked :-)

Instead he offers word salads about the ‘material dethroning of the west’ and the green transition…

Likely underappreciated stylised fact:

In the past 300 years, countries started the Demographic Transition at apprx similar income levels, but over time, transitions have been getting FASTER & SHORTER, so that later transitions end at lower income levels than earlier transitions
Meaning -- developing countries end up in a low-mortality, low-fertility regime at "earlier stages" of their economic development than today's rich countries did.

"Have OK institutions but do get lots of engineers" is the East Asia recipe missed by economists obsessed with exotic institutions & policy distortions; sociologists with embedded autonomy of Weberian bureaucrats; & political scientists with pro-growth settlements & coalitions "But but but education is not fundamental, it's endogenous to institutions and policy", quoth the Preacher, whilst staring at China which opened up to the world market with a massive endowment of technically competent people at such a low level of income.

An extraordinary paper on the long history of the Sino-Indian divergence in human capital investment & attainments & their development consequences. @Nitin_K_Bharti and Li Yang. There's so much information crammed into this!!!

congress-files.s3.amazonaws.com/2021-12/Human_… h/t @paulnovosad who had a thread on this paper with very well chosen graphics.

https://x.com/paulnovosad/status/1852701664966566034

In a book edited by Douglass North (et al), Mushtaq Khan presents an interesting mix of arguments of diverse ideological flavours to explain the ‘rise of Bangladesh’: Pakistani industrial policy + domestic primitive accumulation + IMF structural adjustment + Multi-Fibre Agreement Argument goes: (1) Pakistan’s (corrupt) industrial policies had enriched 22 families from the west but also created industrial assets in the then East Pakistan which in 1947 was basically the half of Bengal without much industry (West Bengal got most of it)

THREAD (again! so sorry!) on inclusive & extractive property rights.

It's been long argued contra AJR & others that it is inaccurate to call property rights which emerged in the Global North 'inclusive' because they depended on violating the property rights of others ( This is a reprise of a thread from 2019, but with modifications. )

I've been holding back on this. But this is my last comment on the matter.

The worst thing that ever happened to economic history & economic historians is AJR. People now think their crap history is economic history.

https://twitter.com/FT/status/1848230772601237843

I said the last word but I must add: above is NOT a full endorsement of Greeley's article. He does add to the accumulation of selective readings of the historiography by AJR. But he does not fully understand the AJR model. Below is a point AJR themselves made in AJR 2005 & WNF !!

THREAD (~50 tweets)

My potted history of institutions in macro-development thinking, at the time of the AJR intervention.

I had most of these thoughts earlier, but this week they have crystallised. I don't discuss AJR specifically, but I do have brief thoughts on their impact 1/ Economists’ *own* sense is that AJR made institutions visible, teachable, testable, & analytically tractable. Before that, economists knew about the work of institutional economists, but it was not a central area of research. North was never terribly influential.

¡¡¡ A L E R T !!!

MAJOR NEW CONTRIBUTION

TO

ECONOMIC HISTORY & DEVELOPMENT

https://twitter.com/oliverwkim/status/1830985359687327919

Oliver & Jen-Kuan are too polite to say what a troll this paper is !