Introduction to Business, Economic and Financial History

Catalog description

Business, Economic and Financial History plays a crucial role today in informing the views of business leaders, policy makers, reformers and public intellectuals. This seminar provides students with the opportunity to acquire a command of the key elements of this important intellectual field. The seminar format enables us to do this engagingly through reading and discussion. Students acquire a knowledge of the fundamental texts and controversies. Each meeting focuses on one foundational debate and provides a means to be up to date with the insights gleaned from rigorous economic history. We will examine twelve important debates and students will be asked to write a paper. The debates will include such questions as: What is growth and how can it be measured? What caused the "great divergence" in long run development among countries? How can we "understand" the rise and fall of slavery and its long shadow today? What is globalization and when did it begin? Did the Gold Standard and interwar fiscal and monetary policy orthodoxy cause the great depression? How can we explain the evolution of inequality in the very long run?