Economic History
- Economic History · 30/10/2026
New York's Education Wars a Century Ago Show how Content Restrictions Can Backfire
Matthew Hawn, a high school teacher for sixteen years in conservative Sullivan County, Tennessee, opened the 2020-21 year in his Contemporary Issues class with a discussion of police shootings. - Economic History · 30/10/2026
Martha Hodes Talks "My Hijacking" with HNN
Martha Hodes l and her older sister Catherine on the single passport they shared. Photo courtesy of Martha Hodes. - Economic History · 30/10/2026
The Army Warned Troops in 1945 of the Danger of Fascism. That Warning Rings True Today
On March 25, 1945, the United States Army issued “Fact Sheet 64: Fascism!” to promote discussions amongst American troops about fascism as the war in Europe wound down to a close. - Economic History · 30/10/2026
Was a Utah District's Decision to Remove the Bible from Shelves a Win for the Anti-Anti-Woke? History Says Maybe Not
The latesttwistin America’s culture wars saw crowds at the capitol in Salt Lake City this summer, protesting a book ban from the elementary and middle school libraries of Davis County, Utah. - Economic History · 30/10/2026
Blaine Harden on the Persistence of Marcus Whitman's Myth in the West
"The Whitman lie is a timeless reminder that in America a good story has an insidious way of trumping a true one, especially if that story confirms our virtue,… - Economic History · 28/10/2026
Inequality in Equal Land
…Every year, we pull the most recent data from the US Census on household wealth, cut by age. - Economic History · 28/10/2026
AI hacking risks
That is the topic ofmy latest Free Press column now there are gift links! - Economic History · 28/10/2026
My Guesses with Respect to the True State of Anthropic: WEDNESDAY WEALTH
What is really going on with Anthropic considered as a potentially profit-making business? - Economic History · 27/10/2026
500,000 “Lines of Code” to Try to Track the Economy: TUESDAY TRENDS & TURMOIL
The task of the economist will then be to figure out what out of the nearly infinite pile of words they have immediate access to is worth reading and thinking about, and… - Economic History · 27/10/2026
Tuesday assorted links
Tuesday assorted links. 1. Which musical styles do smart people prefer? 2. U. of Austin job ads. 3. Walter Koenig, RIP NYT . Chekov. 4. - Economic History · 27/10/2026
Eleven outstanding film and television reviews by Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok
From the Archive–these posts are written by ChatGPT These selections emphasize the quality of the criticism: original interpretations, close attention to the work, and… - Economic History · 27/10/2026
NYT debate on the rules for AI companies
Emily Bazelon was the moderator, there were five of us inthe symposium. - Economic History · 27/10/2026
Is “Who’s on First?” funny?
Well, no, it is not funny, it would be too easy to relieve the dramatic tension by having Abbott explain the actual situation to Costello. - Economic History · 26/10/2026
The Ancient Courts & The Infinite Scroll: MONDAY MAMLMS
In the evenings five-hundred years ago a man named Niccolò Machiavelli would walk into a small study—a writing room. - Economic History · 26/10/2026
The Impact of Silver Loading in ACA Health Insurance Marketplaces -- by Coleman Drake, David Anderson, Dylan Nagy, Mark Shepard
In 2017, the federal government ended payments for cost-sharing reduction CSR subsidies for the Health Insurance Marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act. - Economic History · 26/10/2026
When Cash Wakes Up: Inertia in Institutional Money Market Funds and the Potential Effects of AI Disruption -- by Ali Hortaçsu, Younggeun Yoo
We study institutional cash management by constructing a novel dataset that records the specific money market funds MMFs held by each mutual fund in each month from 2010 to 2024. - Economic History · 26/10/2026
Competition in Generative AI: Evidence from Consumer Demand -- by Mark L. Egan, Dominic Russel, Claire Shi, Vincent Yao
How competitive will the market for generative AI be as it matures? - Economic History · 26/10/2026
The Great Game: A Model of Geoeconomic Competition -- by Christopher Clayton, Matteo Maggiori, Jesse Schreger
We build a model of two hegemons that have valuable trading relationships with each other and at the same time compete in exerting geoeconomic power over countries in the rest of the world. - Economic History · 26/10/2026
A Network Approach to Geopolitics -- by Ernest Liu, Stephen J. Redding, Bennett Smith-Worthington, David Y. Yang
We develop a tractable framework for analyzing geopolitics as a network of coordination and strategic influence. - Economic History · 26/10/2026
Training Your Replacement: Worker Incentives and the Pace of Automation -- by Joshua S. Gans, Peter Landry
Firms ask workers to train AI systems that will replace them. - Economic History · 22/10/2026
How Long Do Wealth Shocks Persist? Less Than Three Generations in England, 1700–2026
What happens across generations to wealth shocks? Do they endure and even magnify, or do they dissipate? - Economic History · 22/10/2026
Thursday assorted links
3.Where do Math Olympiad gold medal winners end up?“By total gold medal count, China is the clear leader, followed by the pack of USA, Russia, and South Korea. - Economic History · 22/10/2026
CROSSPOST: SASHA GUSEV: Vibe Heritability The EJW Symposium on Gregory Clark on Genetics & Social Mobility
My friend Greg Clark takes aim at me in the foreword of his new bookTo Have & Have Not: A recent Substack essay by Brad DeLong, titled,Big Trouble in Little Human… - Economic History · 22/10/2026
How street protests can spark entrepreneurship
Connecting business research with policy, practice and public debate Connecting business research with policy, practice and public debate Social unrest in China can… - Economic History · 22/10/2026
A simple point about the intertemporal regulation of AI
At some point AI will be more regulated than it is today. Furthermore, I believe that most parts of the American economy, once they are regulated, end up overregulated. - Economic History · 22/10/2026
Do mass shootings in universities lead to permanent effects?
Using a stacked difference-in-differences design covering shootings between 1990 and 2025, I compare cohorts at affected universities before and after the shooting with cohorts at matched control universities. - Economic History · 21/10/2026
The Causal Effect of Foreign Ideas on U.S. Innovation
Globalization is once again better than many people realize: We study the role of foreign ideas in U.S. - Economic History · 20/10/2026
CROSSPOST: ALICE EVANS: Stop Pink-Washing Patriarchy
This is part of my surfacing the calling-out-of-idiocy, by crossposting whenever smart people do so. - Economic History · 20/10/2026
MIT Historian Traces “Boston Tea Party” Tea-Chest Label to a Far More Complex Origin
A scholar says a tea-chest label long linked to the Boston Tea Party was produced decades later for commercial trade, showing how artifacts gain “authentic” stories over time. - Economic History · 20/10/2026
CROSSPOST: DAN DREZNER: The Op-Eds About Higher Education Need to Stop Until We Figure Out What the Hell Is Going On With the Op-Ed Contributors
He finds former UCSC German Professor John Ellis with “just bald-faced lies”. - Economic History · 20/10/2026
Tuesday assorted links
Tuesday assorted links. 1. Freddie as AI skeptic and I have given my predictions in fact . 2. Claims about Shakespeare and Marlowe. 3. - Economic History · 19/10/2026
Truman’s Atomic Bomb Decision Revisited: Scholars Still Split on Strategy Versus Circumstance
New research revisits Harry Truman’s contested role in the atomic bomb decision and examines how he sought to control nuclear power as historians’ debates remain sharply divided. - Economic History · 19/10/2026
Study Finds 1906 Naturalization Act Federal Standards Curbed Local Discretion and Bias in U.S. Citizenship Decisions
A study of the Naturalization Act of 1906 finds federal standards quickly reduced city-to-city variation and ended election-year spikes in citizenship grants tied to local politics. - Economic History · 19/10/2026
Inventory Reveals Lorenzo de’ Medici Owned Five Firearms as Renaissance Florence Grappled With Gunpowder’s Moral Stigma
From Lorenzo “the Magnificent” to Duke Cosimo, Florence’s elite embraced firearms once seen as dishonourable. Militias helped normalise guns in civic life and power. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
History of Econometrics: From Its Origins to the Present Day
An article tracing econometrics from early political arithmetic to modern machine-learning, and showing how recurring debates shaped methods, schools and institutions. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
Würzburg’s Hidden Demographic Engine: Migration, Mortality, and the Making of an Early Modern City
Jan de Vries’s study of Würzburg shows how early modern cities survived chronic high mortality by relying on migration to sustain labor forces and urban growth. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
Beyond Steam: How Skill, Community and Know-How Powered the Industrial Revolution
Gillian Cookson’s new book argues Britain’s industrial take-off relied on craft skill, local know-how and networks that turned inventions into reliable factory production. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
Money of the Masses: How Copper Coinage Powered India’s Everyday Economy, 1500–1900
A new study argues copper coinage, not gold or silver, kept India’s everyday economy running, shaping retail trade, wages, taxes and state control of small change. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
Money Beyond Borders: How International Money Has Shifted From Ancient Coinage to Crypto—and Why Power Follows Currency
Eichengreen traces how currencies become “global” through trust, liquidity and power, from ancient coinage to today’s dollar system and crypto ambitions. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
The Insatiable Machine: How Capitalism Became the World’s Dominant Economic System
Trevor Jackson’s “The Insatiable Machine” traces capitalism’s uneven, often violent rise from trade and empire to industry and finance, and why its logic keeps expanding. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
Coerced Labor’s Long Shadow: How Slavery and Emancipation Shaped Modern Prosperity
A new book argues slavery and its dismantling shaped markets, states, and inequality, leaving institutional legacies that still influence modern growth and prosperity. - Economic History · 16/10/2026
Ancient Rome Defies Modern “Masculinity Crisis” Myths, Historical Evidence Suggests
Ancient Rome is often cited as a model of clear-cut male authority, but Roman sources show masculinity was contested and performed. Cicero’s career reveals manhood was shaped as much by civic speech as by combat. - Economic History · 15/10/2026
Marx and Engels’ Forgotten Foray Into the Heart of London’s Financial Markets
Marx and Engels closely tracked London’s financial markets, and Marx even speculated in English stocks after an inheritance. Engels also built a vast investment portfolio. - Economic History · 15/10/2026
Liaquat Ahamed Explores the History of Money, Power and Politics in Wide-Ranging Multi-Format Episode
Economist Liaquat Ahamed joins Tyler Cowen to explore monetary history from bimetallism to interwar gold, asking why some crises scar politics and inequality. - Economic History · 14/10/2026
Wednesday assorted links
2.Those new service sector jobs: “Cambiar de vida: cómo irte a contar pingüinos en la Antártida por hasta 2500 euros al mes.” 4. - Economic History · 14/10/2026
*Plunder: The Last of the War in Europe, 1945*
By Max Hastings,an excellent book, I benefited from every page. - Economic History · 14/10/2026
Well-planned African immigration to America will go fine
That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt: The good news is that African immigrants already have done well in the United States. - Economic History · 13/10/2026
Atlas of the Rust Belt: from the Erie Canal to data centers, two centuries of America’s industrial heartland
A data-driven look at the Rust Belt’s boom, bust and reinvention, from canals and steel to automation, depopulation and a shift toward logistics and data centers. - Economic History · 13/10/2026
The Great Divergence between China and Western Europe: An Lushan, science, or something else?
New economic data suggest China’s income peak came under the Song and declined well before industrialization, challenging the An Lushan thesis and reframing Europe’s edge. - Economic History · 13/10/2026
Solow and Swan: The Neoclassical Growth Model (1956)
In 1956, two economists on opposite sides of the world published essentially the same new model of economic growth within ten months of each other. Robert M. - Economic History · 13/10/2026
When the Times Are Ripe: Merton and Multiple Discoveries in Economics
Sociologist Robert K. Merton argued that most breakthroughs emerge as “multiple discoveries,” as shared knowledge and tools lead different researchers to the same result. Economics offers striking examples, along with patterns in timing and credit. - Economic History · 13/10/2026
Tuesday assorted links
Tuesday assorted links. 1. Jon Hartley on Bob Hall. And Chad Jones on Bob Hall. 2. Nicholas Decker on who might have won the prize. 3. Koyama tribute to Wickam. 4. - Economic History · 13/10/2026
Dealing with a New Schism after the Revolution: The French Government and the Cult of the Petite Église in the Vendée (1802–1830)
Dealing with a New Schism after the Revolution: The French Government and the Cult of the Petite Église in the Vendée 1802–1830 . - Economic History · 13/10/2026
Is Your Agent a Double Agent?
In the Manchurian Candidate a sleeper agent who has been brain-trained appears normal until a secret phrase–“Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little… - Economic History · 12/10/2026
Rumours, Risk, and Returns: How Information Shaped China’s Sovereign Debt Market, 1921–37
Between 1921 and 1937, China’s sovereign debt prices often moved fast on political and fiscal news, but also swung on rumours amid weak state capacity and contested authority. - Economic History · 12/10/2026
The Nobel Prize Goes to Robert Hall and Michael Woodford
Twenty-five years ago Tyler told me he thought Robert Hall should win the Nobel. He has been a contender for so long today’s award was a surprise! - Economic History · 11/10/2026
The Post-War Compromise: Bretton Woods, the Welfare State and the Labour Share (1945-1973)
For roughly thirty years after 1945, wages in much of the rich world rose broadly in step with productivity. - Economic History · 11/10/2026
From the Smokestacks to the Algorithm
Factories spurred mass emancipation by concentrating workers who then built unions, voting rights and welfare states. Big Tech may need an external counterweight to do the same. - Economic History · 10/10/2026
From Quartz to Chip: The Borderless Semiconductor Factory
From Japan’s wafers to Taiwan’s fabrication and South Korean memory, chipmaking depends on a tightly concentrated, cross-border supply chain. No nation controls it end to end. - Economic History · 10/10/2026
Italy's Post-War Economists: From Reconstruction to the Economic Miracle and the 1970s Crisis
Intro: between 1945 and 1980 Italian GDP per capita quadrupled, the South stayed behind, inflation reached 20% and an economist was murdered by terrorists for his ideas on wage indexation.