"although the discussion of socially embedded exchange is incredibly interesting and illuminating, I think anyone who reads the passage above is going to end up sympathising with the people in the economics department who say that you really can’t organise a modern industrial society on the basis of organising a wife-swapping party every time you want to buy a blanket."

"We examine the importance of what we term ‘Fisher dynamics’- the mechanical effects of changes in interest rates, growth rates and inflation rates on debt levels independent of borrowing -for the evolution of household debt in the U.S. over a long time horizon (1929- 2011). Adapting a standard decomposition of public debt to household sector debt, we show that these factors have been important in explaining rising debt levels, especially in the past thirty years. We identify and describe three broad regimes in the growth of household debt and several shorter episodes, distinguished by the distinct roles played Fisher dynamics and borrowing behavior in the evolution of household debt. We then provide some counterfactual trajectories of debt burdens that suggest how important financial changes beginning around 1980 have been in contributing to household debt, independent of any changes in household behavior. Specifically, if average rates of growth, inflation and interest remained the same after 1980 as before 1980, household debt burdens in 2011 would have been roughly the same as they were in the early 1950s, despite the sharp increase in borrowing in the early 2000s. We then discuss the difficulties involved in deleveraging. Under scenarios involving even substantial reductions in household expenditure, returning to debt levels of the 1980s could take decades. If lower private leverage is a condition of acceptable growth,then in the absence of a substantial fall in interest rates relative to growth rates, large-scale debt forgiveness of some form may be unavoidable."

Coates contra Paul, III. (The echoes of Lincoln's 2nd inaugural are a nice touch.)

"India's growth and poverty performance over the last three decades has been a subject of great curiosity. Unlike the East Asian countries, India's growth spurt is not associated with exceptionally high domestic savings or foreign capital inflows or manufacturing exports. So what triggered the change in the growth trajectory? Did the market liberalization policies of the 1990s help? How have the initial conditions shaped the process? And how has the "Indian model" impinged on India's central problem of mass poverty? This paper surveys the literature and offers its own assessment of the drivers of change."

One of those essays which would really be much clearer, and easier to judge, as a mathematical model.

"To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation.

Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth.

While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments."

I have been avoiding reading Graber's book, since it didn't sound like it was any advance over Polanyi's (classic!) _The Great Transformation_.  But this is great, so I'm sold.

"calls for the reconstruction of economic history, one in which history and the social sciences are brought to bear on economics, and not the other way around."

"Most histories of nineteenth-century Afghanistan argue that the country remained immune to the colonialism emanating from British India because, militarily, Afghan defenders were successful in keeping out British imperial invaders. However, despite these military victories, colonial influences still made their way into Afghanistan. Looking closely at commerce in and between Kabul, Peshawar, and Qandahar, this book reveals how local Afghan nomads and Indian bankers responded to state policies on trade. 
British colonial political emphasis on Kabul had significant commercial consequences both for the city itself and for the cities it displaced to become the capital of the emerging Afghan state. Focused on routing between three key markets, Connecting Histories in Afghanistan challenges the overtly political tone and Orientalist bias that characterize classic colonialism and much contemporary discussion of Afghanistan. "

"This book offers a bold new interpretation of American business history during the formative years 1870–1920, which mark the dawn of modern big business. It focuses on four major revolutions that ushered in this new era: those in power, transportation, communication, and organization. Using the metaphor of America as an economic hothouse uniquely suited to rapid economic growth during these years, it analyzes the interplay of key factors such as entrepreneurial talent, technology, land, natural resources, law, mass markets, and the rise of cities. It also delineates the process that laid the foundation for the modern era, in which virtually every human activity became a business, and, in most cases, a big business. The book also profiles numerous major entrepreneurs whose careers and activities illustrate broader trends and themes. It utilizes a wide variety of sources, including novels from the period, to produce a lively narrative."

"Bear in mind that what protectionism does, according to textbook economics, is to cause a misallocation of resources, reducing the economy’s efficiency. It does not cause mass unemployment of resources — which is what the Depression was about. ... But going back to Hayek: attributing the failure to recover to trade restrictions was, in a way, characteristic. Hayek, like his modern followers, never could get his mind wrapped around the fact that the key problem in depressions, and the key observation his theory needed to explain, wasn’t misallocation of labor and other resources — it was mass unemployment. It’s not surprising to see that in the depths of depression he was focused on removing what was, in the end, a minor source of allocative inefficiency. But it’s a stark reminder of the extent to which he really, truly, didn’t get it."

"In that sense, this time really is different: while the first great global financial crisis was followed by major reforms, it’s not clear that anything comparable will happen after the second. And history tells us what will happen if those reforms don’t take place. There will be a resurgence of financial folly, which always flourishes given a chance. And the consequence of that folly will be more and quite possibly worse crises in the years to come." --- I wonder, does Krugman read Ken MacLeod? If not, someone should send him a copy of The Fall Revolution.

Krugman looks back on his _Geography and Trade_ after 20 years, before an audience of actual geographers. With how-I-model reflections.

The explanation of when pricing errors are more serious than quantity errors is very nice.

Recommended by Krugman

"xisting indicators of technical change are plagued by shortcomings. I present here new measures based on books published in the field of technology that resolve many of these problems and use them to identify the impact of technology shocks on economic activity. They are positively linked to changes in R&D and scientific knowledge and capture the new technologies' commercialization dates. Changes in information technology are found to be important sources of economic fluctuations in the post-WWII period and total factor productivity, investment and, to a lesser extent, labor are all shown to increase following a positive technology shock."

"The French government currently honors a very unusual debt contract: an annuity that was issued in 1738 and currently yields E1,20 per year. I tell the story of this unique debt, which serves as an anecdotal but symbolic summary of French public finances since the 18th century." Or: That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even the dead can collect interest.

"He reaches these conclusions by confusing causation with correlation, deducing something about the location of an unobserved variable from a correlation, assuming that 19th and 20th century financial markets must have been efficient and reaching a conclusion by not considering any alternative. Altogether a methodologically interesting article."

Attempting to figure out how much of the profits of US non-financial firms was down to "financial relations" ("payment of interest, financial incomes and capital gains, depreciation of the debt by inflation, the consideration of net worth instead
of tangible assets as a measure of capital"), plus a profit rate estimate for the financial sector ("It declined up to the early 1980s, and then sharply recovered").

"Economic theory is crystalized history. But when the historical episodes out of which theory is being crystalized are as rare and as scarce as they are in the case of large-scale fiscal stimulus programs, why crystalize? Why not just take the history raw?" --- To which I say, isn't this like asking "why shoot heroin when you could just smoke opium?"

"The Concentration of Wealth, Its Causes and Results". Interesting pre-Pareto statistics on wealth concentration in the late 19th century US. Tabulations are by divisions into discrete classes, but sometimes with multiplicatively-increasing cut-offs. I wonder if P. tried a plot of something like this first?

(Divide through for the (small r-) republican boilerplate about how great inequality caused the ancient empires to fall, etc. I'd contend that extremely gross inequality is the normal historical condition for state societies. It doesn't make them nicer places to live in, but it's certainly sustainable.)

"While industrial America was built by and for the urban North, rural Southerners comprised much of the labor, management, and consumers in the postwar service sector that raised the Sun Belt to national influence. These newcomers to the economic stage put down the plough to take up the bar-code scanner without ever passing through the assembly line. Industrial culture had been urban, modernist, sometimes radical, often Catholic and Jewish, and self-consciously international. Post-industrial culture, in contrast, spoke of Jesus with a drawl and of unions with a sneer, sang about Momma and the flag, and preached salvation in this world and the next."

Brad DeLong on the evolution and current state of central banking.

Beware your data.

note in passing: _none_ of his 3 ways of organizing R&D matches the (uniquely successful) system of modern American science.

Nice summary of the classic book by Alfred Chandler.

"Unified Growth Theory", i.e., economic growth. Talks a lot about attractors. Anything to this?

Surprisingly sane; notes at http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2006-05.html

Brad reflects on the start of his economic history course; and also on the place of economics and scientific progress in modern history, and the reciprocity between history and social science

"he has built a very heavy structure on a very narrow base."

Another review, more critical and detailed

Making the obvious points that (1) his Malthusian mechanisms were at work in a lot of places, not just England, and (2) even if you take the heritability of personality traits at face value, it's very weak

Some supporting details for Bowles's review

101 = modern political economy; 113 = American economic history