1,721,021 research outputs found
Culture and religion
No full textCulture is the result of, and is itself expressed through, religion, language, institutions and history. Culture is persistent but does change slowly over time. Religion is either one manifestation of culture or itself shapes that culture. This chapter discusses recent contributions to the economics of culture and religion, a literature which was instigated by economic historians and has long been dominated by their work. Its author especially focuses on the role of culture and religion in engendering industrial progress and institutional change
Famine and disease
No full textThe infrequency of severe mortality crises and, more generally, the low prevalence of famine and disease are characteristics of modern industrial and post-industrial societies. Understanding mortality crises is an important part of understanding some fundamental aspects of preindustrial economies. Understanding the processes leading to their decline and the associated improvements in living standards and life expectancy—what Robert Fogel (2004) called the ‘escape from hunger and premature death’—is a precondition for knowing what is needed to prevent the re-emergence of widespread famine and lethal infectious disease. So this is a field in which the contribution of economic historians is vital and, given that the stakes are so high, one in which economists would do well to carefully consider the past, before making assumptions about the future
Economics versus history
No full textEconomic history is an interdisciplinary field that fuses economics with history, two disciplines that often misunderstand one another. This chapter bridges these two disciplines by discussing archetypical approaches and research strategies in each. The authors contrast the differences between deductive, inductive and abductive reasoning in scholarly enquiry. They conclude with a call for consideration to (historical) context when conducting research in economics and economic history
Industrial revolution and British exceptionalism
No full textThe British Industrial Revolution is probably the most important event of the last 10,000 years. This chapter reviews some of the more recent literature on this topic. The focus is primarily on the timing and location of the Industrial Revolution. Contributing factors discussed include institutions, culture and human capital, factor prices, consumer goods and household work, female agency, finance, trade and geography
Introduction, or why we started this project
No full textThis introductory chapter, written by the editors of this book, provides a personal account of the origins of this unique teaching and learning resource. Part of its motivation lies in the paradox that economic historians are perceived to be an endangered species at the exact moment there is newfound demand for their services. The other is the active economic history scene that is populated by researchers with diverse academic backgrounds, exemplified by the contributors to this book.<br/
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
- …
