10 April 2009
Economic History Society Annual Conference 2009
PRESS BRIEFINGS
WHY THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION WAS BRITISH
The Industrial Revolution was invented in
Why did the Industrial Revolution take place in eighteenth century
BRITAIN’S POST-WAR RELATIVE ECONOMIC DECLINE: LESSONS FOR THE CURRENT CRISIS
Weak competition in product markets was central to
According to Professor Nick Crafts, speaking to Economic History Society’s annual conference, this economic history has lessons for the present crisis:
‘It is surely important not to repeat the errors of the 1930s and 1940s, which undermined competition and which, because they proved so difficult to reverse, set the scene for relative economic decline in the subsequent three decades.
‘There is a strong case for much stricter financial regulation but this needs to be distinguished from a claim that a return to state interventionism is generally desirable. A return now to industrial policy and protectionism really would be a triumph for hope over experience.’
THE FUTURE OF THE HOUSING MARKET: LESSONS FROM THE 1840s RAILWAY MANIA
The housing slump may be far from over. That is one suggestion that emerges from research into a similar episode, known as the Railway Mania, which occurred in the 1840s. In both periods a rapid increase in the price of assets in one sector of the economy – railways then and property now – was followed by a sustained and dramatic decline.
The research by Gareth Campbell finds that the price of railway shares increased by an average of 105% in just over two years; but the market then crashed and investors endured five years of almost continual price declines, with railway shares falling by an average of 57% from their peak. House prices have been falling for just over one year so far, and are still only about 15% below their peak.
It is widely believed that the current credit squeeze, leading to bank failures, is a modern phenomenon arising from the interplay of a historically unique set of circumstances that could not have been foreseen. But a team of academics – a finance professor and two medieval historians – at the
A sub-prime borrower, liquidity disappearing, recriminations, the seizure of foreign owned assets and runs on the bank may sound like today’s headlines. But according to Dr Adrian Bell, Professor Chris Brooks and Dr Tony Moore, these were the events of the period leading up to a credit crisis that started in 1294, more than 700 years ago.
In the 1280s, the Italian merchant societies, the forerunners of today’s investment banks, were awash with money as they managed large sums of collected taxes for the Pope and the English king, as well as holding deposits from wealthy individuals. But in the early 1290s, the Pope called in much of his money and the French king levied a huge tax on the Italian merchants in France. The final straw was the unexpected outbreak of war between England and France in 1294.
ENTREPRENEURIAL CULTURES: HOW THE ENGLISH COMPARE WITH OTHER GROUPS AND NATIONS
Analysis of the cultures of entrepreneurship of different immigrant groups in the United States in the twentieth century reveals that the English were consistently less entrepreneurial than other groups. But the research by Professor James Foreman-Peck also shows that a strong and persistent entrepreneurial culture does not guarantee successful business entrepreneurship.
Individuals inheriting a highly entrepreneurial culture are simply more likely to exercise their initiative and ingenuity. Whether they do this in politics, crime or legitimate business, will be determined by institutions, resources and history, among other factors.
Do we need a more entrepreneurial culture? How do we tell what entrepreneurial culture contributes to prosperity? This study uses US census data from 1910 and 2000 to show that some national entrepreneurial cultures are persistent over the twentieth century. They can therefore contribute to explaining long-term economic performance. But a strong entrepreneurial culture is not sufficient for growth. Without the right institutions, such a culture can be destructive.
CHINA SET TO BECOME THE NEW IMPERIAL POWER
China will soon overtake the United States to become the next imperial power, new research suggests. China has absorbed much of the advanced technology developed by the United States in the post-war period, and is now better equipped to exploit this knowledge than is the United States itself.
Mark Casson, Ken Dark and Mohamed Azzim Gulamhussen – three economists at the University of Reading – have developed a new approach to the history of imperialism that identifies the key conditions that lead to successful imperialism. A successful imperialist possesses a unique set of strategic advantages that allows it to occupy and govern other countries. These advantages reflect different types of knowledge. The advantages are not only military, but civilian too.
THE POST-WAR FAILURE OF ORGANIC FARMING IN BRITAIN - THE ROLE OF 'LAZY' FARMERS
The organic food and farming movement was raring to go in Britain after the Second World War. But according to research by Erin Gill, the Soil Association, which was created in 1946, failed to make much progress for over 40 years because farmers chose to embrace industrial agriculture at the expense of more environmentally friendly organic techniques.
Farmers decided that organic agriculture was too tough. They chose to use new and ‘easy’ industrial techniques – ones that depended on chemicals and new forms of mechanization – to increase their incomes and reduce the physical labour necessary to grow crops and raise livestock.
Although the number of farmers using organic methods has increased in recent years, less than 5% of British farmland is under organic production. Very little farmland in the eastern part of the UK (East Anglia, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, etc.) is managed organically.
This is one of the reasons why the number of farmland birds continues to fall, why the pollution of watercourses with agricultural chemicals remains such a problem and why surface flooding is increasingly an issue in eastern Britain. More arable farmers in eastern England and Scotland need to convert to organic production if we are to see environmental improvements.
Although female labour force participation rates remained relatively low during the interwar period in Britain, new research by Jessica Bean finds that those women who did work were able to make significant contributions to household income, and their earnings often made the difference between the household’s falling below the poverty line or not.
The study also finds that among women working in low-wage jobs, the relationship between the hourly wage and hours worked per week was negative. This suggests that at low wage rates, women had to work longer hours to make up for shortfalls in household income.
At the higher wage rates associated with emerging employment in the clerical and professional sectors, the relationship between wages and hours worked was positive, as is typically found for female workers in Britain and other industrialized countries in the post-World War II era.
The study uses a large survey of working-class households in London, the New Survey of London Life and Labour, which was carried out by researchers at the London School of Economics between 1929 and 1931.
Constitutions that enfranchise business lobbies assist rather than hinder economic growth. Business lobbies use national representative institutions to regulate and deregulate markets, both of which assist national economic growth.
These are the conclusions of new research by Dr William Pettigrew, which finds that the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 provided the political framework for the Industrial Revolution and British global supremacy up to the 19th century.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN IN UK ECONOMICS
Women remain under-represented among professors of economics, according to the latest survey of the gender and ethnic minority proportions at various grades in employment in the economics departments of UK universities. One in three men are professors compared with just one in six women.
The bi-annual survey, conducted by the Women’s Committee of the Royal Economic Society, also finds that: Women are 20% of all academic staff in economics; the proportion of women is higher in research jobs than in standard academic jobs; the he proportion of women is higher among part-timers than full-timers; 15% of staff are from ethnic minorities but only 9% of professors.
THE POSITION OF WOMEN AT THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS
Despite major efforts to promote gender equality across the London School of Economics (LSE), significant disparities between men and women persist in terms of pay structures, promotions and length of contract. Professor Janet Hunter of the LSE’s economic history department reports that:
During 2007-8, LSE had more female than male students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, yet women were well under 50% of all permanent and fixed term academic staff.
As of 2008-9 only 23% of the LSE professoriate was female.
Some of these gender disparities are mirrored in the faculty and student profile of the economic history department, which has only two tenured female faculty but large numbers of female students.
The gender profile of tenured faculty has remained unchanged over a long period, as, unlike at most other universities, at LSE all recent tenured appointments in economic history have been of male academics.
THE CRISIS OF ECONOMIC HISTORY RESEARCH
Just when policy-makers and the public are looking to economic history for insights into the current crisis, a new survey shows that the UK is facing a crisis in the subject. A large number of our economic historians are in the top rank of academia, but Dr Helen Paul reveals that there are far fewer early-career economic historians than there are staff facing retirement.
A central driver of the failure to recruit the next generation has been government’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). This was designed to measure how researchers were performing but is damaging to disciplines like economic history that do not fit easily into the panel system.
