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Cvrcek, Tomas
Living Standards, Anthropometric History, Economic Anthropology
18th Century
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
Europe
North America
Dec 19, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Roderick Floud, Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris and Sok Chul Hong, The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xxvi + 431 pp. $33 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-521-70561-5.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Tomas Cvrcek, Department of Economics, Clemson University.
If you care about the quality of life of yourself in old age and of your descendants over the next few generations, I am pleased to report that the authors of The Changing Body have mostly good news for you. (More on that later.)
This book is a result of several decades of research into the interaction between...
Bogart, Dan
Economic Development, Growth, and Aggregate Productivity
Industry: Manufacturing and Construction
Urban and Regional History
18th Century
19th Century
Europe
Dec 15, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Eric L. Jones, Locating the Industrial Revolution: Inducement and Response. Singapore: World Scientific, 2010. vii + 272 pp. $68 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-981-4295-25-3.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Dan Bogart, Department of Economics, University of California -- Irvine.
The Industrial Revolution is often modeled as a national or continental phenomenon. The most common questions are why did Britain industrialize first and not France, or why Europe and not Asia? However, there is a case to be made that the Industrial Revolution was a regional phenomenon. Here the classic question is why did northern England industrialize and southern England not. Southern England was more...
Hohenberg, Paul M.
Development of the Economic History Discipline: Historiography; Sources and Methods
Economywide Country Studies and Comparative History
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
Historical Demography, including Migration
Household, Family and Consumer History
Industry: Manufacturing and Construction
International and Domestic Trade and Relations
Labor and Employment History
Markets and Institutions
Medieval
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
19th Century
Asia
Europe
North America
Dec 13, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Laura Cruz and Joel Mokyr, editors, The Birth of Modern Europe: Culture and Economy, 1400-1800: Essays in Honor of Jan de Vries. Leiden: Brill, 2010. xiv + 259 pp.. €99/$141 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-90-04-18934-8.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Paul M. Hohenberg. Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (emeritus).
Festschrifts are an honored tradition, a celebration of the work and influence of a distinguished scholar usually respected as well as admired by many colleagues and former students. They are also a somewhat antiquated and awkward form of scholarly communication, sometimes with what the French would call a “bottom of the drawer” feeling. ...
Maloney, Thomas N.
Income and Wealth
General or Comparative
General, International, or Comparative
Dec 12, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Branko Milanovic, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality. New York: Basic Books, 2011. xiv + 258 pp. $28 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-465-01974-8.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Thomas N. Maloney, Department of Economics, University of Utah.
With the emergence of the “Occupy” movement in the Fall of 2011, the issue of income inequality has gained an unusually prominent place in the political conversation in the United States. The discussion of inequality has always been present to some degree, especially during the past 30 years or so as inequality has grown by a variety of measures. Still, the American public lately...
Siklos, Pierre
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
General, International, or Comparative
Dec 9, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
John Singleton, Central Banking in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. xii + 337 pp. $99 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-521-89909-3.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Pierre Siklos, Department of Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University.
These are heady times for central bankers. Central bankers appear to be the only ones with tools to prevent a recurrence of a second Great Depression. As John Singleton reminds us in this volume on Central Banking in the Twentieth Century, central bankers were not always viewed favorably. The volume begins by noting that central banks as institutions took on significant roles in the maintenance of price stability,...
Shilts, Wade E.
Financial Markets, Financial Institutions, and Monetary History
Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
History of Economic Thought; Methodology
20th Century: Pre WWII
Europe
Dec 8, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
John Maynard Keynes, Keynes on the Wireless, edited by Donald Moggridge. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. vi + 228 pp. $40 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-230-23916-6.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Wade E. Shilts, Department of Economics and Business, Luther College.
John Maynard Keynes described his Essays in Persuasion as “the croakings of a Cassandra who could never influence the course of events in time” (1931 [1963], p. v). He of course would be proved twice wrong. We might debate whether Keynes gets the economics correct, but his writings never croaked and he certainly hasn’t been without influence. Indeed, a better title for that...
Toporowski, Jan
History of Economic Thought; Methodology
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
Europe
Dec 7, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Julio G. López and Michaël Assous, Michal Kalecki. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. x + 258 pp. $110 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-4039-9937-5.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Jan Toporowski, Economics Department, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.
The excellence of Tony Thirlwall’s series for Palgrave on Great Thinkers in Economics is confirmed by this volume on Michał Kalecki, written by Kalecki’s former student, Julio López Gallardo (Professor at UNAM, Mexico City), and Michaël Assous (Maître de Conferences at the University of Paris, Panthéon-Sorbonne). The book is important in part because of the very enigmatic quality of Kalecki’s ideas which,...
Drelichman, Mauricio
Government, Law and Regulation, Public Finance
Medieval
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
Europe
Dec 5, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
David Stasavage, States of Credit: Size, Power, and the Development of European Polities. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. xi + 192 pp. $40 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-691-14057-7.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Mauricio Drelichman, Department of Economics, University of British Columbia.
States of Credit revolves around a single, clearly articulated claim. In the Medieval and Early Modern periods, access to sovereign credit largely depended on the presence of a representative assembly with strong powers of control over the sovereign. This type of representative assembly was in turn more likely to emerge in the absence of substantial geographical barriers...
Harreld, Donald J.
International and Domestic Trade and Relations
Markets and Institutions
Medieval
16th Century
17th Century
18th Century
19th Century
Europe
Dec 2, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Sheilagh Ogilvie, Institutions and European Trade: Merchant Guilds, 1000-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. vi + 493 pp. $38 (paperback), ISBN: 978-0-521-74792-9.
Reviewed for EH.NET by Donald J. Harreld, Department of History, Brigham Young University.
Why did merchant guilds exist for such a long time in Europe? This is an obvious question to ask of an institution that persisted for hundreds of years, but one for which it turns out there is not an easy answer. Most scholars who have studied merchant guilds have insisted that merchant guilds must have existed, and persisted, because they were efficient institutions; inefficient institutions, on the other...
Rhode, Paul
Economic Development, Growth, and Aggregate Productivity
19th Century
20th Century: Pre WWII
20th Century: WWII and post-WWII
North America
Dec 1, 2011
Published by EH.NET (December 2011)
Alexander J. Field, A Great Leap Forward: 1930s Depression and U.S. Economic Growth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. ix + 387 pp. $45 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-300-15109-1.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Paul Rhode, Department of Economics, University of Michigan.
Sometimes if you look at a familiar object in a slightly different way, it takes on an entirely new appearance. Many examples of the phenomenon are offered by Alexander Field’s path-breaking book, A Great Leap Forward, which re-examines the history of productivity growth in the United States. In his leading example, Field observes that if one uses 1941 as a breakpoint, instead of...