Cliometrics is an approach to economic history that is all about the use of economic theory and quantitative methods to explain economic and institutional change.

The LSE Cliometrics Group is a student-run seminar held at the London School of Economics and Political Science. It is aimed as a forum to present early cliometric research to a friendly, helpful, audience of peers.

This term, the seminar is held every fortnight on a Monday in room V301 (3rd floor of Tower 2) at 6PM. Access is through Tower 1 for those without an LSE swipe-card.

Contact Chris Colvin (c.l.colvin@lse.ac.uk) if you are interested in attending or presenting in future. Alternatively, get in touch using this Facebook page.

Programmes for other economic history seminars held at the LSE can accessed from here.

Lent Term 2010

Monday 25 January
Speaker: John A. James (University of Virginia)
Title: 'Panics and the disruption of private payments networks: The United States in 1893 and 1907' (with James McAndrews and David F. Weiman)
Abstract: The periodic financial crises which hit the United States before the establishment of the Federal Reserve System were often severe enough to occasion collective action on the part of the banking system. In order to relieve pressures on reserves, three times in the postbellum period, 1873, 1893, and 1907, banks in many or most cities declared periods of suspension or restrictions of cash payments at par in which they temporarily restricted or denied altogether the redemption of their deposit liabilities in cash. In this paper we examine the nature of two of these payments system disruptions, those of 1893 and 1907, and their impact on liquidity and real economic activity. After 1893 New York banks began to assume an even more integral role in mediating long-distance payments and in supplying banks with central-bank like services. In the aftermath of the 1907 panic the apparent vulnerability of the national payments system to panics and suspensions in New York spawned a reform movement to create the Federal Reserve, which then nationalized the clearing-settlement functions of New York banks.
Full paper: Download from here.

Monday 8 February
Speaker: Ali Coskun Tuncer (LSE)
Title: 'International financial control as a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval": An analysis of bond spreads'
Abstract: One of the main characteristics of the classical gold standard era was continuous capital flows from core countries to the peripheries in the form of sovereign debt. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as a result of accumulated debts, peripheral countries faced with difficulties to meet the interest and capital payments of their debt. Most heavily indebted borrowers faced with moratoria, and creditors adopted different kind of sanctions to deal with them. One of the sanctions imposed to debtor countries was to establish international financial control organisations (IFCs), which were to be administered by the representatives of the creditors. IFCs were assigned with the task of administering and collecting specific tax revenues. Moreover, in some cases they implemented monetary and fiscal reforms in the debtor countries. This paper, by relying on the Ottoman and Greek cases, discusses the role of IFCs around the controversial question of “what guided investor decisions during the classical gold standard era”. By relying on a time series analysis of historical bond spreads, the paper concludes that international financial control exercised by the representatives of the creditors on the Ottoman and Greek finances was an important determinant of the sovereign risk.

Monday 22 February
Speaker: Eoin McLaughlin (National University of Ireland, Maynooth)
Title: 'Solving the Irish ‘land question’: Land reform and the Irish economy, 1870-1939'
Abstract: This paper is a study of state funded land purchase as a solution to the Irish ‘land question’, a name given to problems associated with the land ownership structure in Ireland in the late nineteenth century. The paper argues that state intervention in the agricultural land market acted as a negative check on long term agricultural productivity. The ‘land question’ emerged as a central issue in Irish politics and political economy in the late nineteenth century, with various attempts made to ameliorate and solve it. The ‘land question’ is something which has attained significance in the wider Irish historiography as it is seen as a key component in the development of Irish national and political identity. A number of perceived solutions to the ‘land question’ saw the direct involvement of the state in landlord-tenant contractual relationships and the introduction of long-term state funded lending schemes. This paper judges the relative efficacy of these solutions, which effectively amounted to the subsidisation of the entire Irish agricultural sector.

** EXTRA SEMINAR: Friday 26 February **
Speaker: Peter Lindert (UC Davis)
Title: 'Revealing Failures in the History of School Finance'
Time: 4 PM
Location: NAB 114 (1st Floor, New Academic Building)
Full paper: Download from here.

Monday 8 March
Speaker: Tom Nicholas (Harvard Business School)
Title: 'Real estate prices during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression' (with Anna Scherbina)
Abstract: Using unique data on real estate transactions, we construct nominal and CPI-adjusted hedonic price indices for Manhattan from 1920 to 1939. The CPI-adjusted index falls during the recession that followed WWI, rises to a local peak in 1926 and declines again following the collapse of the Florida real estate bubble. It subsequently recovers to reach its highest value in late 1929 before falling by 74 percent at the end of 1932 and hovering around that value until 1939. A typical property bought in the beginning of 1920 would have retained only 41 percent of its initial value two decades later.
Full paper: Downloaded from here.

Monday 15 March
Speaker: Kiril Kossev (University of Oxford)
Title: TBA

Past LSE Cliometrics Group seminars

Past seminar speakers and their papers can be viewed and downloaded from this page.

Last updated by Chris Colvin on 12 February 2010