EH.N: CfP: XVth World Economic History Congress, Panel on Historical Roots of Poverty and Well-Being in Developing Countries

[Morten Jerven]

XVth World Economic History Congress, Utrecht 2009 3 to 7 August

Call for Papers for a panel on Historical Roots of Poverty and 
Well-Being in Developing Countries


A recent development in the field of economic history, albeit with older 
antecedents, which has spurred a great scholarly interest, is the effort 
of tracing the historical roots of current divergence of incomes and 
occurrences of poverty in the world. It has recently famously been 
argued that the fundamental cause of current income levels is the lack 
of pro-growth institutions which originated under the colonial system. 
However, tracing the cause of current economic success long back in 
history runs the risk of neglecting important developments which lie in 
between time t=0 and today. Growth has been episodic in developing 
countries, and it is a major challenge to distinguish which periods were 
important and which were perverse or unsustainable.

This session welcomes new research that suggests new evidence and 
methods to explain long term economic and social change and by 
implication the current predicament of developing countries. Poverty and 
well-being are broadly defined, including indicators like education, 
health, and inequality, in addition to the conventional national income 
measures and its derivates. Important issues to be considered in the 
session are suggested as, but not exclusive to the origins and evolution 
of factors and policies which have had an influential and persistent 
impact on current well-being, the importance of the colonial impact, the 
importance of institutions and institutional continuity. Studies 
confronting the concept of legacy, pointing to changes of fortunes 
despite the persistence of underlying conditions, are also welcome.

Organizers:
Morten Jerven and Alexander Moradi

Preliminary List of Participants:
Tirthankar Roy, Gareth Austin, Paul Mosley, Sue Bowden, Leandro Prados 
de la Escosura, Jan Pieter Smits, Kris Inwood, Denise Cogneau, Oliver 
Masakure, Nathan Nunn, Daron Acemoglu, Ann Booth, Ewout Frankema

Instructions: We need to inform the local organizing committee of the 
final list of participants and submit all papers and abstracts on the 
31st of May. We need some time to make a decision on the final list of 
participants, and organize the materials so the deadline for submission 
of a paper is 15th of May. We have two sessions of 90 minutes, which 
means we can accommodate 12 papers a 10 min, leaving 2 x 30 minutes for 
discussion. Papers will be circulated in advance, so that we can assume
that we are familiar with each others papers and put emphasis on group 
discussion.

Submit papers and any questions to Morten Jerven (M.Jerven at lse.ac.uk).