EC11CH23_Akcigit ARjats.cls July 29, 2019 15:22 Annual Review of Economics History, Microdata, and Endogenous Growth Ufuk Akcigit1,2,3 and Tom Nicholas4 1Department of Economics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA; email:
[email protected] 2National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA 3Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC 20009, USA 4Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA; email:
[email protected] Access provided by Harvard University on 09/10/19. For personal use only. Annu. Rev. Econ. 2019. 11:615–33 Annu. Rev. Econ. 2019.11:615-633. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org Keywords The Annual Review of Economics is online at economic development, growth, history, innovation economics.annualreviews.org https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-economics- Abstract 080218-030204 The study of economic growth is concerned with long-run changes, and Copyright © 2019 by Annual Reviews. therefore, historical data should be especially influential in informing the All rights reserved development of new theories. In this review, we draw on the recent literature JEL Codes: O31, O38, O40 to highlight areas in which study of history has played a particularly promi- nent role in improving our understanding of growth dynamics. Research at the intersection of historical data, theory, and empirics has the potential to reframe how we think about economic growth in much the same way that historical perspectives helped to shape the first generation of endogenous growth theories. 615 EC11CH23_Akcigit ARjats.cls July 29, 2019 15:22 1. INTRODUCTION The study of history has been instrumental to the development of endogenous growth theory.