Objectives
How did the world we live in today come to be? Why did some societies industrialize while others fell behind? Can the past help us understand global inequality, financial crises, or even various reforms?
This course treats economic history as a laboratory: we will use the past to test big ideas about how economies grow, why they collapse, and how people adapt to shocks. Moving beyond dates and events, we will engage with core debates in economics, from the Great Divergence to the Industrial Revolution, colonial legacies, global wars, and welfare states. Discussing these themes through both historical narratives and empirical methods, namely OLS, IV, DiD, and RDD. You will read canonical works alongside the most cutting-edge research, learning how to think critically about causality and long-run development. Along the way, you will see how historical evidence can shed light on current issues like inequality, globalization, and technological change.
Why take this course? Because it's more than history, it's about understanding the roots of today's world through using the tools of economics. You will leave not just knowing "what happened," but with the ability to analyze, argue, and investigate our history like a researcher. By the end of this course, you will come away astonished by the scope of economic history; realizing that questions you never thought measurable can, in fact, be rigorously tested with data.
- Opettaja
Asfand Yar Khan