On the status and the future of economic history in the world

How many economic historians are there in the world? In which countries or world regions are they concentrated? Can we explain differences in the number of economic historians who are participating in world congresses, and which determinants encourage or limit participation propensity? Using an e-mail questionnaire, we analyse the global situation of this discipline. Overall 59 countries were available to be surveyed in this overview. We estimate the overall number of economic historians in the world to be around 10,400 scholars.Economic history, world, survey

On the human capital of Inca Indios before and after the Spanish conquest: Was there a "pre-colonial legacy"?

Not only the colonial period, but also the pre-colonial times might have influenced later development patterns. In this study we assess a potential pre-colonial legacy hypothesis for the case of the Andean region. In order to analyze the hypothesis, we study the human capital of Inca Indios, using age-heaping-based techniques to estimate basic numeracy skills. We find that Peruvian Inca Indios had only around half the numeracy level of the Spanish invaders. The hypothesis holds even after adjusting for a number of potential biases. Moreover, the finding has also crucial implications for the narrative of the military crisis of the Inca Empire. A number of explanations have been given as to why the Old American Empires were not able to defend their territory against the Spanish invaders in the early 16th century. We add an economic hypothesis to the debate and test it with new evidence: Were the human capital formation efforts of the Inca economy perhaps too limited, making it difficult to react appropriately to the Spanish challenge? --human capital,age-heaping,Inca empire,inequality,growth

Globalization and educational inequality during the 18th to 20th centuries: Latin America in global comparison

Special Issue on Latin American Inequality.This paper explores the inequality of numeracy and education by studying school years and numeracy of the rich and poor, as well as of tall and short individuals. To estimate numeracy, the age-heaping method is used for the 18th to early 20th centuries. Testing the hypothesis that globalization might have increased the inequality of education, we find evidence that 19th century globalization actually increased inequality in Latin America, but 20th century globalization had positive effects by reducing educational inequality in a broader sample of developing countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence for Kuznets’s inverted U hypothesis, that is, rising educational inequality with GDP per capita in the period until 1913 and the opposite after 1945.En este artículo se estudia la inequidad en la alfabetización matemática –numeracy- y en la educación analizando los años de escolarización y alfabetización matemática de ricos y pobres, ya sean individuos altos o bajos. Para estimar la alfabetización matemática utilizamos el método age heaping para los siglos XVIII y XIX. Contrastando la hipótesis de que la globalización puede haber incrementado la inequidad educacional, encontramos evidencias de que la globalización del siglo XIX aumentó esta inequidad mientras la globalización del siglo XX tuvo, sin embargo, efectos positivos en la reducción de la inequidad educacional en una amplia muestra de países en desarrollo. Además, hemos encontrado evidencias que confirman la hipótesis de la U invertida de Kuznets: una relación positiva entre la inequidad educacional y el PBI per cápita en el período anterior a 1913 y lo opuesto en el período posterior a 1945.The ESF-GlobalEuroNet and EU HIPOD projects

Anthropometric methods and the interdisciplinary conversation between archaeology and economics

In this paper we use possibilities of interdisciplinary work between archaeology and economics, focusing on the development of European living standard in terms of nutritional status in long-run perspective (1st to 18th century AD), and its determinants. We applied anthropometric methods using a data set of nearly 9500 human height measurements as proxy for mean nutritional status, and a data set of more than 2 million animal bones to measure the impact of changes in cattle production. Milk cattle husbandry, interacted with sparse population density, has had positive effects on mean height: (1) Proximity to protein production resulted in a low local shadow price of milk, as it could not be transported over distances. (2) This low price resulted in a low inequality of nutritional status; in contrast pork induced nutritional inequality, because it could be preserved and traded, thus becoming expensive and affordable only for the rich

Understanding the decline of interpersonal violence in the ancient middle east

How did human societies succeed in reducing interpersonal violence, a precondition to achieve security and prosperity? Given that homicide records are only available for the more recent period, much of human history remains virtually outside our purview. To fill this gap, a literature intersecting economics, archaeology, and anthropology has devised reliable methods for studying traumas deliberately inflicted in human skeletal remains. In this paper we reconstruct the early history of conflict by exploiting a novel dataset on weapon-related wounds from skeletons excavated across the Middle East, spanning the whole pre-Classical period (ca. 8,000-400 BCE). By documenting when and how ancient Middle Eastern populations managed to reduce intersocietal violence and achieve remarkable levels of development, we broaden historical perspectives on the structural factors driving human conflict

On the status and the future of economic history in the world

How many economic historians are there in the world? In which countries or world regions are they concentrated? Can we explain differences in the number of economic historians who are participating in world congresses, and which determinants encourage or limit participation propensity? Using an e-mail questionnaire, we analyse the global situation of this discipline. Overall 59 countries were available to be surveyed in this overview. We estimate the overall number of economic historians in the world to be around 10,400 scholars

Back to the ‘Normal’ Level of Human-Capital Driven Growth? A Note on Early Numeracy in Korea, China and Japan, 1550 - 1800

This paper draws on a unique data set, hojok (household registers), to estimate numeracy levels in Korea, 1550–1630, and evidence on Japan and China from the early modern period until 1800. We found that a substantial share of East Asians rounded their ages to multiples of five. However, the extent of age-heaping was quite low by global standards, even considering the potential sources of upward bias inherent in the data. Therefore, the unusually high level of numeracy in East Asia in the early 21st century was already present in the early modern period. The findings imply that in the Korean case, for example, the foundations of the human-capital based catch-up growth were laid very early. More broadly, we argue that Korea, Japan, and China returned to the growth-path at different points of the 20th century, and this return was pre-determined by their early numeracy development

On the status and the future of economic history in the world

How many economic historians are there in the world? In which countries or world regions are they concentrated? Can we explain differences in the number of economic historians who are participating in world congresses, and which determinants encourage or limit participation propensity? Using an e-mail questionnaire, we analyse the global situation of this discipline. Overall 59 countries were available to be surveyed in this overview. We estimate the overall number of economic historians in the world to be around 10,400 scholars

Numeracy of religious minorities in Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition era

We assess the numeracy (age heaping) of religious minorities, particularly Jews, and other defendants of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, and compare it with the general Iberian population. Our database includes 13,000 individuals who took part in Inquisition trials, and 17,000 individuals recorded in censuses and parish registers who serve as a control group. We thoroughly discuss the representativeness of our samples for the populations we aim to capture. Our results point at a substantial numeracy advantage of the Judaism-accused over the Catholic majority. Furthermore, Catholic priests and other groups of the religious elite who were occasional targets of the Inquisition had a similarly high level of numeracy.Estimamos las capacidades numéricas (numeracy) de minorías religiosas -judíos en particular- y otros reos de la Inquisición Española y Portuguesa, y las comparamos con el resto de la población ibérica. Nuestra base de datos incluye 13.000 individuos que participaron en juicios de la Inquisición, y 17.000 individuos recogidos en censos y registros parroquiales que sirven de grupo de control. Discutimos minuciosamente la representatividad de nuestras muestras para las poblaciones en cuestión. Nuestros resultados apuntan a una ventaja sustancial de los acusados de judaísmo con respecto a la mayoría católica. Asimismo, los sacerdotes católicos y otros grupos religiosos elitistas, que fueron el blanco de la Inquisición, tenían un nivel alto de habilidades numéricas