ECON 394
European Economic History
Last Offered Fall 2018
Division II
This course is not offered in the current catalog or this is a previous listing for a current course.

Economic history directly informs our understanding of the process of economic development. With this in mind, this course will explore a series of questions related to the economic development of Europe from the early modern period until today. Why did modern economic growth first occur in Europe, and not in China or the Middle East? Why did the Industrial Revolution occur in Britain and not France? What was the role of colonialism in the acceleration of European growth? What explains the rise and fall of the Soviet economy? What are the causes and consequences of European economic integration since World War II?To answer these and other questions, we will investigate how institutional changes, the evolution of technology, aspects of globalization, and various forms of government intervention have impacted economic growth and living standards in European history, and how those developments have affected the rest of the world. Drawing on a wide variety of empirical and theoretical readings, the course will focus on how economic historians marshall evidence and construct arguments in ways that borrow from and contribute to other fields of economics.