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(Thursday, 6th May 2004)
Title : Cliometrics and the NIE: The Rise of the New Institutional Narrative
I. Introduction: Why Are Some Nations Rich and Some Poor?
- Economic History as the Empirical Study of Long Run Changes in Economic Development
II. From Story-Telling to the Rise of the New Economic History (also Cliometrics)
- The Development of National Income Accounting
- Importance of the Neoclassical/Solow Growth Model
- Rostow and the Stages of Economic Growth
- Mathematics, Econometrics and History: the Invention of Cliometrics
- From Success to Stagnation
III. North and the Rise of the New Institutional Economics
- The shift from macro modeling to considering the role of political economy, law, and organization
IV. Core of the NIE Methodology
- The problem of credible commitment
- The conflict between production and predation
V. Methodological Pluralism
- Case studies, game theory, micro analysis
- The new institutional narrative as analytical synthesis
VI. Where Do We Go From Here?
Bibliographical references :
Douglass North and John V. C. Nye, Cliometrics, the New Institutional Economics, and the Future of Economic History. Economic History Association, 62nd Annual Meeting, "Private versus Public Institutions", October 11 - 13, 2002.
Douglass C. North, "Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600-1850," Journal of Political Economy 76 (Sept/Oct. 1968), pp. 953-70.
Greif, A. (1997) "Cliometrics after 40 Years", American Economic Review, 87 (2), p 400-403.