The two Revolutions in Economic History

1. 2019 Handbook of Historical Economics Conference New York University, NY October 12th and 13th 2019 The two Revolutions in Economic History Martina Cioni Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena Giovanni Federico Division of Social Science, New York University Abu Dhabi and CEPR Michelangelo Vasta Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Siena

2. 130 years of economichistory i) ‘traditional’ approach(1892 to 1958)– EH a (small) subfield of history, taughtalso in economicsdept ii) the Cliometricrevolution(1960s and 1970s) – EH became a (fashionable) subfield of economics iii) The lull (1980s and 1990s): EH still a subfieldof economics, but no longerfashionable iv) A new dawn (2001 [AJR]] to present)? EH back in fashion amongeconomists, largelythanksto a change in researchquestions

3. Motivations On-goingchanges can be interpretedas ‘secondrevolution’, possiblyasmomentuousas the Cliometricone – butaffectingtopicsratherthanmethods. In thischapterwelook atthis ‘secondrevolution’ in the mirror of the Cliometricone

4. The First Cliometricrevolution i) Articles dealt with big traditional issues in economic history (slavery, railroads etc.) ii) They used simple but explicit theoretical modelling (including counterfactuals) to put forward testable hypotheses iii) They tested them with simple quantitative analysis as econometric work was severely constrained by lack of data and limited computing power iv) The revolution was marketed very aggressively, as the ‘true’ and ‘scientific’ economic history vs the ‘traditional’ (history-oriented) one

5. The ‘Second revolution’ • Articlesaddresstwonew sets of issues: a) whichhistoricalcauses of currenteconomicoutcomes (e.g. GDP) and/or b) which (economic?) causes of non economicoutcomes (mostlypoliticalones) - • Mostarticleshave no explicittheoreticalmodels • Theyrelyveryheavily on data-mining and statisticalinference, mostnotably IV estimates, with zilions of robustnesstests • Theyignore by definition the work of economichistorians, astheypursue a differentresearch agenda

6. Our data-base(s) i) economichistory data-base, 1927-2018, fivejournals, ??Articles (CFV 2019a) ii) Integrated data-base, 2001-2018, total 2578 articles, adding 425 in tenleadingeconomicsjournals(CFV 2019b) iii) Extended data-base, 2001-2018 – total 2695 – adding to the integratedone 117 articles in threeadditional ‘history-friendly’ journals (thischapter) -

7. Cliometricarticles We define an article as ‘cliometric’ if i) uses(basic microeconomic) theory – as shown by the presence of key words such as counterfactual, market equilibriumand so on ii) usesatleasteconometrics – atleastcorrelations or regressions

8. The Clio revolution: new techniques

9. The pace of the Clio revolution

10. The diffusion of the Clio revolution: journals

11. The world-wide diffusion: countries

12. The ‘Second revolution’: PS and NEO articles Weselect in ourextended data-base (2695 articles), according to the mainresearchquestion • Persistencestudies (PS): articleswhich ‘estimates the effect of an historical event on outcomes at least one century ahead in time’ • Non economicoutcome (NEO): articlesdealing with domesticpoliticaloutcomes, internationalpolitics and personal (non economic) behavior Allotherarticles are defined ‘traditionaleconomichistory’

13. Economichistory in AER, QJE and JPE: a long runview Source: for T3-E: McCloskey (1976), Abramitzky (2015) and our own data; for universe: 1970-2000, Card-Della Vigna (2013, Appendix); 2001-2018, our own data.

14. The numbers of ‘Second revolution’

15. The timing of the ‘revolution’

16. The ‘Second revolution’: the journals

17. The ‘Second revolution’: the authors

18. The ‘Second revolution’: the countries

19. What are wespeakingabout: the NEO • Over a halfdomesticpolitical science issues (voting…) a sixthinternationalpolitics (wars) and the rest personal behaviour (mixedbunch) • About a half on 20th century, and a fifth on the ‘long 19th century’ • Over twothirds on OECD countriesand a furthersixth cross-country (world). Mostly USA (unsurprisingly), with sizeablenumber on Nazi Germany, Jews etc. Veryfewon Third World topics

20. What are wespeakingabout: the PS The legacy of AJR (2001) deeplyaffects the field: • Half on GDP or itsproxies (e.g. lightning) • Onethirdarticles cross-country, a fiftheach Africa, other Third World and only OECD • Almosthalf on long runeffects of pre-colonialinstitutions, slave trade and colonialism (plus a sixth on religiuousinstitutions/missionaries) • Main alternative approach – very long runeffects of some permanent trait (environmental, genetic)

21. The success of the Second revolution

22. Conclusions: the future? The ‘Cliometricrevolution’ hastransformed the field. Itistooearly to predict the evolution of the Second revolution Will PS (and NEO?) be re-absorbed in a new synthesis with ‘traditional’ economichistory? Will PS become the new paradigmasHistoricaleconomics, while ‘traditional’ economichistorywither? Will the fieldfinalsplinter, with differentapproaches co-existingpossibly in differentdepartments?

23. Top field database • Our main database includes 6,516 articles, all those published in the T5-EH since their establishmentto the last issue of 2017 • Sources: all articles in T5-EH and Scopus database • We collected information on • key bibliographic references of articles (names of the authors, title, issue of the journal, pages) • authors’ affiliation and country • content of articles (topic, geographical area and period) • methods and tools (tables, figures and econometrics) • impact in scientific community (citations received)

24. T5-EH database CLIO (2007) EEH (1969) JEH (1941) EHR (1927)

25. The three tribes of scholars T10-E and T5-EH Out of the 2,251 authors included in the database: • 1,630 have published only in T5-EH • 467 only in T10-E • Only154 (6.8% of the total) in both T5-EH and T10-E journals • Only 39 (1.7%) if we consider the “high flyers” authors, who have authored (or co-authored) at least two articles in both T5-EH and T10-E

26. 198 Our database atglance • Our database includes a total of 2695 articles published from 2001 to 2018

27. The three tribes of scholarsT5-E and T5-EH Out of the 2,251 authors included in the database: • 1,710 have published only in T5-EH • 202 only in T10-E • Only74 (3.7% of the total) in both T5-EH and T10-E journals • Only 16 (0.8%) if we consider the “high flyers” authors

28. The evolution of T5-EH network • Since 1997 T5-EH attract interest from different fields (not only “economics” and “history”) • Connections with economics grow stronger in 2017 (with the partial exception of the T5-E) • Our evidence seems to confirm the conventional wisdom on the integration of EH into economics

29. T5-EH network: 1997 T5-EH network: 2017 The evolution of T5-EH network

30. Integration? • The share of economic history articles in economics journals • Significant differences between articles in T5-EH and in T10-E in topic, period and geographical area (multinomial logit regressions) • Overlapping of authorship between T-10E and T5-EH • Pattern of cross-citations between T10-E and T5-E

31. Share of EH articles by different groups, 2001-2018 • The share in the T10-E has fluctuated quite widely around 3%, without any clearly upward trend • The share in the T5-E is higher than in the T5-Ebis

32. The success in citations: Ratio of citations per year, EH articles vs all economics articles in T10-E