Call for Papers and Meeting Information

Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, September 8-10, 2023

Call for Papers: EHA 2023: Love and Toil, Care and Work

CALL FOR PAPERS HAS CLOSED

CALL FOR POSTERS IS NOW OPEN! (see side menu for link)

The theme for EHA 2023 is ‘Love and Toil, Care and Work’. While Adam Smith defined economics in terms of wealth creation and Lionel Robbins in terms of limited means and unlimited ends, Alfred Marshall thought of it as ‘…a study of men (sic) as they live and move and think in the ordinary business of life’. Nothing could be more ordinary than caring. It takes place all the time and all around us. It involves diverse tasks, which can be commercialised but are often unpaid, although sometimes very labour intensive. Care can be provided domestically, or in the community, but today it is increasingly globalised. Most importantly, care adds significantly to wellbeing, and simultaneously enhances productivity. However, (and here I build on last year’s theme), caring work is hidden in plain sight. Since it is often unpaid and performed in private households this is perhaps understandable, yet we recognise and impute values to other non-market activities. Moreover, commercialised caring is also neglected and undervalued, despite constituting a significant sector of most economies. It takes a pandemic of catastrophic proportions to reveal care’s importance. But while we applauded our carers not so long ago, they and their product are already fading from our economic consciousness. The program committee calls for papers that identify caring’s importance, not only to secure a more complete account of the ordinary business of life, but also to augment, perhaps even correct, standard interpretations of economic history framed in terms of Smithian enrichment or Robbinsian rational allocative order.

The Program Committee, chaired by Eric Schneider (London School of Economics), welcomes submissions on all subjects in economic history, though some preference will be given to papers that fit the theme of the conference. Papers should be submitted individually, but authors may suggest to the Committee that three particular papers fit well together in a panel. In addition to typical research papers, egg timer talks, 10-minute talks without questions, will be trialled at EHA in 2023. These talks allow speakers to lay out the main findings of their research and receive informal feedback after the sessions from attendees. Work being presented should in all cases be in progress rather than accepted or published. Submitters should let the program committee know at the time of application if the paper they are proposing has already been submitted for publication. Individuals who presented or co-authored a paper given at the 2022 meeting are not eligible for inclusion in the 2023 program. Proposals for papers, egg timer talks, and sessions should be submitted online, with the following submission form: https://eh.net/eha/2023-eha-meeting-proposal/. The submission system will be available starting September 18, 2022. Paper and egg timer talk proposals should include a 3–5-page proposal and a 150–word abstract suitable for publication in the Journal of Economic History and should be submitted by January 31, 2023, to ensure consideration. Please note that at least one of the authors needs to be a member of EHA.

Graduate students are encouraged to attend the meeting, and the association offers students subsidies for travel, hotel, registration, and meals, including a special graduate student dinner. A poster session welcomes work from dissertations in progress. The poster submission system will open on March 1, 2023. Applications for the poster session are due no later than May 21, 2023, online on the meetings website. The dissertation session, convened by Vellore Arthi (University of California, Irvine) and Patrick Wallis (London School of Economics), will honor six dissertations completed during the 2022-2023 academic year. The submission deadline is May 31, 2023. The Allan Nevins and Alexander Gerschenkron prizes will be awarded to the best dissertations on North American and non-North American topics respectively. Dissertations must be submitted as a single PDF file. Files of less than 5 MB in size may be sent directly to the conveners as an email attachment. To submit a file over 5 MB, please supply a download link in an email message. The Nevins prize submissions should be sent to: varthi@uci.edu and the Gerschenkron prize submissions to: P.H.Wallis@lse.ac.uk. All submissions will be acknowledged by return email.

If you have any questions about the conference in general or you are a graduate student interested in the subsidies, please email the EHA Meetings Coordinator, Jeremy Land (jeremy.land@helsinki.fi).

The Economic History Association announced the 2022 prize winners at this year’s Annual Meeting in La Crosse, WI.

Jingyi Huang, Harvard University and Brandeis University, received the Allan Nevins Prize for the Best Dissertation in U.S. or Canadian Economic History, for the dissertation “The Impact of Innovation, Regulation, and Market Power on Economic Development: Evidence from the American West”, completed at University of California, Los Angeles. (This prize is awarded on behalf of Columbia University Press.)

Hanzhi Deng, Fudan University, received the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize for the Best Dissertation in non-US or Canadian Economic History, for the dissertation “A History of Decentralization: Fiscal Transitions in Late Imperial China, 1850-1911″, completed at the London School of Economics.

Gregory Clark, University of California, Davis, was awarded the annual Jonathan Hughes Prize honoring excellence in teaching economic history.

Robert Gallman, Paul Rhode, and Zorina Khan shared the Alice Hanson Jones Biennial Prize for Outstanding Book in North American History. Gallman and Rhode were awarded for their book Capital in the Nineteenth Century: Chicago University Press. Khan was awarded for the book Inventing Ideas: Patents, Prizes, and the Knowledge Economy: Oxford University Press.

Alan Taylor was awarded the Engerman-Goldin Prize for contributions in the past six years in creating, compiling, and sharing data in the JST Macrohistory Dataset.

Chicheng Ma was awarded the Cole Prize for the article “Knowledge Diffusion and Intellectual Change: When Chinese Literati Met European Jesuits,” Journal of Economic History, 81 (4): 1052-1097.”

The award for Excellence in Refereeing for the Journal of Economic History went to Vellore Arthi, University of California, Irvine.

The award for Exceptional Service to the Journal of Economic History Editorial Board went to Latika Chaudhary, Naval Postgraduate School.

Timur Natkhov and Natalia Vasilenok were awarded the Larry Neal Prize for their article “Skilled Immigrants and Technology Adoption: Evidence from the German Settlements in the Russian, ” Explorations in Economic History, Vol 81, July 2021.

Guido Alfani and Mark Koyama were honored for their service as outstanding reviewers for Explorations in Economic History.

Congratulations to the 2022 awardees!

Each year the Economic History Association awards numerous grants and fellowships to deserving young scholars. Additionally, Cambridge University Press has made a generous donation to help the EHA endow one of the Dissertation Fellowships and two of the Pre-Dissertation Exploratory Grants.

The 2022 awardees are:

Arthur H. Cole Grant in Aid for Post-Doctoral Research:
Michael Andrews, University of Maryland Baltimore County
Jeff Chan, Wilfrid Laurier University
Tamoghna Halder, Azim Premji University
Sarah Quincy, Vanderbilt University
Cory Smith, University of Maryland

Economic History Association Dissertation Fellowships
Nicholas Bartos, Stanford University
Laura Montenegro, University of Chicago
Cosimo Petracchi, Brown University

Cambridge University Press Dissertation Fellowship
Madison Arnsbarger, University of Pittsburgh

Sokoloff Dissertation Fellowship
Katherine Hauck, University of Arizona
Hillary Vipond, London School of Economics

Cambridge University Press Pre-Dissertation Exploratory Grants
Thomas Storrs, University of Virginia
Danielle Wilson, American University

Economic History Association Pre-Dissertation Exploratory Grants
Jasmin Bath, University of Cambridge
Miquel Faus Faus, University of Valencia
Jaeyoung Ha, University of California, San Diego
Anne Kruse, Vanderbilt University
Francis Russo, University of Pennsylvania
Rohan Shah, Columbia University
Kaitlin Simpson, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Qiyi Zhao, Stanford University

For more information on the Grants and Fellowships awarded by EHA go to: http://eh.net/eha/grants-and-fellowships/

The Economic History Association announced the 2021 prize winners at this year’s Annual Meeting in Tucson, AZ.

Brian Marein, University of Toronto, received the Allan Nevins Prize for the Best Dissertation in U.S. or Canadian Economic History, for his dissertation “The Economic Development of Puerto Rico after United States Annexation”, completed at University of Colorado. (This prize is awarded on behalf of Columbia University Press.)

Emiliano Travieso Barris, Carlos III University of Madrid,  received the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize for the Best Dissertation in non-US or Canadian Economic History, for his dissertation “Resources, Environment, and Rural Development in Uruguay, 1779-1913″, completed at the University of Cambridge.

Jari Eloranta, University of Helsinki, was awarded the annual Jonathan Hughes Prize honoring excellence in teaching economic history.

Ron Harris and Gregg Huff  shared the Lindert-Williamson Biennial Prize for Outstanding Book in Global, African, Asian, Australian, and/or South American History. Harris was awarded for his book “Going the Distance: Eurasian Trade and the Rise of the Business Corporation, 1400-1700”: Princeton U Press. Huff was awarded for his book “World War II and Southeast Asia, Economy and Society under Japanese Occupation”, Cambridge Univ Press.

Neil Cummins was awarded the Cole Prize for his article ““Where is the Middle Class? Evidence from 60 million English Death and Probate Records, 1892-1992,” Journal of Economic History, 81(2): 359-404.”

The Ranki Prize, awarded every other year for an Outstanding Book on the Economic History of Europe, went to two books this year: Sheilagh Ogilvie was awarded for her book “The European Guilds”, (Princeton University Press, 2019) and Philip Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal were awarded for their book “Dark Matter Credit”, (Princeton University Press, 2019).

Steven Ruggles was awarded the Gallman-Parker Prize for his lifetime contributions in creating, compiling, and sharing data.

The award for Excellence in Refereeing for the Journal of Economic History went to Steven Nafziger, Williams College.

The award for Exceptional Service to the Journal of Economic History Editorial Board went to  Karen Clay, Carnegie Mellon University.

Guillaume Blanc, Brown University,  and Romain Wacziarg, UCLA, Anderson, were awarded the Larry Neal Prize for their article “Change and Persistence in the Age of Modernization: Saint-Germain-d’Anxure, 1730-1895”, Explorations in Economic History, Vol 78, October 2020.

Dan Aaronson, Chicago Fed, and Vellore Arthi, University of California, Irvine, were honored for their service as outstanding reviewers for Explorations in Economic History.

Congratulations to the 2021 awardees!

On-site registration: closed

Call for Papers and Meeting Information

Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association in La Crosse, Wisconsin, September 16-18, 2022

Call for Papers: EHA 2022: Hidden Figures

Calls for Posters and Dissertations Are Now Closed

The Call for Papers Has Closed

Full Final Program Now Available – Click Here

The theme for EHA 2022 is “Hidden Figures.” Economic history is a broad field spanning time and space using methodologies that range from broad synthetic histories to more narrowly focused examinations of a particular event, place, or period. Yet, our work often excludes the activities, agency or contribution of particular groups or societies due to the challenges of finding evidence, particularly quantitative evidence. To give two examples. Women are often invisible due in part to name change on marriage or being seen as legally passive actors. Indigenous societies are considered as distinct and separate from the societies or economies in which they reside. Our focus on the most visible may not matter, but it may lead to a distortion of the historical reality we seek to understand. The program committee calls for papers that seek to integrate such groups into the economic histories of the societies they share and inhabit. Of course, proposed papers on all areas of economic history are welcome and graduate students are encouraged to attend.

The Program Committee, chaired by Taylor Jaworski (University of Colorado), welcomes submissions on all subjects in economic history, though some preference will be given to papers that fit the theme of the conference. Papers should be submitted individually, but authors may suggest to the Committee that three particular papers fit well together in a panel. Papers should in all cases be works in progress rather than accepted or published work. Submitters should let the program committee know at the time of application if the paper they are proposing has already been submitted for publication. Individuals who presented or co-authored a paper given at the 2021 meeting are not eligible for inclusion in the 2022 program. Papers and session proposals should be submitted online, with the following submission form: PROPOSAL SYSTEM HAS CLOSED. The submission system will be available from November 1, 2021 onward. Paper proposals should include a 3–5-page proposal and a 150–word abstract suitable for publication in the Journal of Economic History. Paper proposals should be submitted by February 15, 2022, to ensure consideration. Please note that at least one of the authors needs to be a member of EHA.

Graduate students are encouraged to attend the meeting. The association offers subsidies for travel, hotel, registration, and meals, including a special graduate student dinner. A poster session welcomes work from dissertations in progress. The poster submission system will open on March 1, 2022. Applications for the poster session are due no later than May 21, 2022, online on the meetings website. The dissertation session, convened by Joshua Lewis (Université de Montréal) and Caroline Fohlin (Emory University), will honor six dissertations completed during the 2021-2022 academic year. The submission deadline is May 15, 2022. The Allan Nevins and Alexander Gerschenkron prizes will be awarded to the best dissertations on North American and non-North American topics respectively. Dissertations must be submitted as a single PDF file and must be the original dissertation that was submitted and approved by your committee. Files of less than 5 MB in size may be sent directly to the conveners as an email attachment. To submit a file over 5 MB, please supply a download link in an email message. The Nevins prize submissions should be sent to: Joshua.lewis@umontreal.ca and the Gerschenkron prize submissions to: caroline.fohlin@emory.edu. All submissions will be acknowledged by return email.

If you have any questions about the conference in general or you are a graduate student interested in the subsidies, please email the EHA Meetings Coordinator, Jeremy Land (jeremy.land@helsinki.fi).

June 12, 2020

The Officers and Board of Trustees of the Economic History Association, like so many of our members, indeed as so many other people in the United States and around the world, have been appalled by the recent senseless killings of Black men and women by police officers. We condemn these acts in the strongest possible terms. We stand with our colleagues in other academic associations and with the peaceable and rightfully impassioned protestors who are calling for fundamental changes in our system of justice.

As economic historians we recognize that these acts are the product of a deep seated racism that has persisted in the United States for centuries. Racism that can be seen not only in policing, but in many other important dimensions of our national life: in inequality in wealth and income, inequality in opportunities for schooling, inequality in employment, and inequality in housing and health care. This last form of inequality is brutally revealed in the disproportionate number of deaths of Black people produced by Covid19.

Economic Historians, including many members of our Association, have long devoted their research to documenting the causes and consequences of racism in the United States. Many of them have published important scholarly articles in our Journal of Economic History.

Like so many others we are not sure about exactly what we should be doing. But we recognize that for scholars, it is a moment to teach.  We encourage all of our members to reach out to students, colleagues, and the broader public, by all the media they use, to inform the nation better about the tragic origins, causes of its persistence, and costs of racism.  In revising your reading lists for the Fall term, we encourage you to increase your students’ awareness of the history behind the events of these past few weeks.

While we inform others about the long history of racism and its effects we cannot ignore the work we still need to do to make economic history a welcoming and diverse profession.

Hugh Rockoff

President of the Economic History Association

On Behalf of the Economic History Association Officers and Board of Trustees

The Economic History Association is a proud member of the National Coalition for History. NCH is a consortium of more than 50 organizations that advocates on federal legislative and regulatory issues affecting historians, archivists, researchers, teachers, students, preservationists, political scientists, museum professionals, genealogists, and other stakeholders. Priority issues include maximizing researcher access to government records and information, support for history education, and funding for agencies like the National Archives, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Park Service, and Institute of Museum and Library Services. NCH is also a driving force behind the Congressional History Caucus.

For more information, and to sign up for email alerts, visit historycoalition.org

At the recent 2017 Board of Trustee meeting in San Jose, CA the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to issue the following statement:

The Economic History Association prides itself on its openness to all, regardless of gender, sexuality, race or religion.  The EHA embraces a spirit of respect and tolerance to foster collegiality and to encourage and develop graduate students and faculty.

The values exhibited on the internet message board, Economics Job Market Rumors, are antithetical to those we embrace.  The Board of Trustees condemns unequivocally the abusive language on the EJMR site, including but not limited to the sexist, racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic statements.  This type of language has no place in academic debate and discourse.

The following EHA members and conference attendees have joined the Board in their support of this statement:

EHA members wishing to have their name added to this list can send an email to taylorland@eh.net.