DOCSLIB.ORG

An Economic History of the World Since 1400 Course Guidebook

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
An Economic History of the World Since 1400 Course Guidebook Topic Subtopic Finance & Economics Economics An Economic History of the World since 1400 Course Guidebook Professor Donald J. Harreld Brigham Young University PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2016 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. Donald J. Harreld, Ph.D. Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History Brigham Young University r. Donald J. Harreld is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Brigham Young University, where he has Dtaught since 2001. Dr. Harreld graduated from the University of Minnesota with academic majors in History and Psychology. He received his M.A. from Minnesota in 1996. He was named an honorary fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation and a Fulbright fellow to the University of Antwerp from 1996 to 1997. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2000. In 2005, Dr. Harreld returned to the University of Antwerp, where he was a visiting research scholar in the Centre for Urban History. Since 2007, he has served as executive director of the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. Dr. Harreld specializes in the social and economic history of early modern Europe. His specific area of interest is in the economic history of the Low Countries. His work has focused on merchant communities, the expansion of Europe, early modern business communications, and commercial networks. In addition to teaching courses on economic history and the history of European expansion, Dr. Harreld teaches world history, urban history, and the history of identity. He has twice been named an Alcuin fellow by Brigham Young University for excellence in teaching general education courses. i An Economic History of the World since 1400 Dr. Harreld is the author of High Germans in the Low Countries: German Merchants and Commerce in Golden Age Antwerp and several articles on various aspects of European economic and urban history. He is the editor of the Companion to the Hanseatic League and is working on a book about Dutch voyages of exploration in the early 17th century. ■ ii Table of Contents INTRODUCTION Professor Biography ........................................... i Course Scope ................................................1 LECTURE GUIDES Lecture 1 Self-Interest, Human Survival, and History .........................4 Lecture 2 Marco Polo, China, and Silk Road Trade ..........................12 Lecture 3 Manorial Society in Medieval Europe ............................20 Lecture 4 How Black Death Reshaped Town and Field .......................28 Lecture 5 Late-14th-Century Guilds and Monopolies ........................36 Lecture 6 European Discovery Routes: East and West .......................43 Lecture 7 1571: Spain, Portugal Encircle the Globe .........................51 Lecture 8 Old World Bourses and Market Information .......................59 Lecture 9 The Europeans’ Plantation Labor Problem ........................67 iii An Economic History of the World since 1400 Lecture 10 Adam Smith, Mercantilism, State Building ........................75 Lecture 11 British and Dutch Joint-Stock Companies .........................83 Lecture 12 Europe, the Printing Press, and Science ..........................90 Lecture 13 The Industrious Revolution: Demand Grows .......................98 Lecture 14 Why Didn’t China Industrialize Earlier? ..........................106 Lecture 15 18th-Century Agriculture and Production .........................114 Lecture 16 Industrial Revolution: The Textile Trade .........................122 Lecture 17 British Coal, Coke, and a New Age of Iron .......................130 Lecture 18 Power: From Peat Bogs to Steam Engines .......................138 Lecture 19 A Second Industrial Revolution after 1850 .......................145 Lecture 20 Family Labor Evolves into Factory Work .........................153 Lecture 21 Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Modern Firm .......................161 Lecture 22 19th-Century Farm Technology, Land Reform .....................169 Lecture 23 Speeding Up: Canals, Steamships, Railroads .....................176 iv Table of Contents Lecture 24 European Urbanization and Emigration .........................184 Lecture 25 Unions, Strikes, and the Haymarket Affair ........................191 Lecture 26 Banks, Central Banks, and Modern States .......................198 Lecture 27 Understanding Uneven Economic Development ..................206 Lecture 28 Adam Smith’s Argument for Free Trade .........................214 Lecture 29 Middle-Class Catalogs and Mass Consumption ...................222 Lecture 30 Imperialism: Land Grabs and Morality Plays ......................229 Lecture 31 World War I: Industrial Powers Collide ..........................237 Lecture 32 Russia’s Marxist-Leninist Experiment ............................244 Lecture 33 The Trouble with the Gold Standard ............................252 Lecture 34 Tariffs, Cartels, and John Maynard Keynes .......................260 Lecture 35 Japanese Expansionism: Manchurian Incident ....................268 Lecture 36 U.S. Aid and a Postwar Economic Miracle. 276 Lecture 37 Colonialism and the Independence Movement ...................284 v An Economic History of the World since 1400 Lecture 38 Japan, the Transistor, and Asia’s Tigers ..........................293 Lecture 39 The Welfare State: From Bismarck to Obama .....................300 Lecture 40 The End of American Exceptionalism? ..........................308 Lecture 41 Middle East: From Pawn to Power Broker ........................316 Lecture 42 Germany, the European Union, and the Euro .....................324 Lecture 43 Free Trade: Global versus Regional Blocs ........................332 Lecture 44 Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and the Soviet Decline .......................340 Lecture 45 Half the World Left behind in Poverty ...........................347 Lecture 46 China, India: Two Paths to Wealth Extremes ......................355 Lecture 47 The Information Economy: Telegraph to Tech ....................363 Lecture 48 Leverage with Globalization in Its Grip ..........................371 SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Bibliography ..............................................379 Image Credits .............................................395 vi An Economic History of the World since 1400 Scope: At its most basic, economic history concerns itself with the ways that mankind has structured his environment in the past in order to provide food, shelter, and clothing. Actually, most of human history has been shaped by how people have struggled to meet these basic needs. This course will examine the ways in which people and societies have provided for themselves by focusing on what they produce, how they produce it, and how production is distributed and consumed. Modern economic history, which for most scholars treats the past 500 or so years, has been shaped by all aspects of the human experience, and a wide range of extraordinary events, such as wars, plagues, exploration, technological innovation, and trade, have all affected economic reality over time. This course takes a chronologically presented thematic approach to modern economic history. Although it does not attempt to touch on every possible topic that economic historians are concerned with, it has sought to present the most important topics and trends in economic history since 1400. It is true that a course like this one will be quite Eurocentric, meaning that the point of view is from the European, or Western, perspective, but this is because the modern world economy has been so dominated by Western ideas and ideals that if we are trying to understand the world we live in today, we will necessarily focus on Europe. It is also true that in the distant past, Europe’s economy was rather insignificant compared to the economies of the great empires of Asia, such as India and China, but in our modern world, the economic system and institutions that developed in Europe over the past 500 years are the ones that have taken hold and predominate in our own time. Even though our focus will be on Europe, we will explore various regions of the world as they begin to play a role in the development of the modern economy. 1 An Economic History of the World since 1400 In this course, we will explore the development of productive agriculture in the modern era. Mankind transitioned from hunter-gatherer to cultivator millennia ago, but only recently has agriculture been productive enough to allow people to focus their efforts on other activities, such as manufacturing and commerce. Thus, we will examine the development of business contracts and agreements, the form these took, and how they changed over time to give rise to a variety of partnerships and corporative relationships. We will also review the expansion of trade as discovery voyages and overland trade brought various regions of the world into closer contact than ever before. With the increase in maritime trade, an idea of economic nationalism, or what Adam Smith would have
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture WILLIAM J
    This chapter will appear in: Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest . Influence and How to Limit it. Edited by Daniel Carpenter and David Moss. Copyright © 2013 The Tobin Project. Reproduced with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Please note that the final chapter from the Cambridge University Press volume may differ slightly from this text. A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture WILLIAM J. NOVAK A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture WILLIAM J. NOVAK PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SCHOOL OF LAW The idea of regulatory capture has controlled discussions of economic regulation and regulatory reform for more than two generations. Originating soon after World War II, the so-called “capture thesis” was an early harbinger of the more general critique of the American regulatory state that dominated the closing decades of the 20th century. The political ramifications of that broad critique of government continue to be felt today both in the resilient influence of neoliberal policies like deregulation and privatization as well as in the rise of more virulent and populist forms of anti-statism. Indeed, the capture thesis has so pervaded recent assessments of regulation that it has assumed something of the status of a ground norm – a taken-for-granted term of art and an all-purpose social-scientific explanation – that itself frequently escapes critical scrutiny or serious scholarly interrogation. This essay attempts to challenge this state of affairs by taking a critical look at the emergence of regulatory capture theory from the perspective of history. After introducing a brief account of the diverse intellectual roots of the capture idea, this essay makes three interpretive moves.
    [Show full text]
  • Syllabus Economics 341 American Economic History Spring 2017
    Syllabus Economics 341 American Economic History Spring 2017 – Blow Hall 331 Prof. Will Hausman Economics 341 is a one-semester survey of the development of the U.S. economy from colonial times to the outbreak of World War II. The course uses basic economic concepts to help describe and explain overall economic growth as well as developments in specific sectors or aspects of the economy, such as agriculture, transportation, industry and commerce, money and banking, and public policy. The course focuses on events, trends, and institutions that fostered or hindered the economic development of the nation. At the end of the course, you should have a better understanding of the antecedents of our current economic situation. The course satisfies GER 4-A and the Major Writing Requirement. Blackboard: announcements, assignments, documents, links, data, and power points will be posted on Blackboard. Importantly, emails will be sent to the class through Blackboard. Text and Readings: There is a substantial amount of reading in this course. The recommended text is Gary Walton and Hugh Rockoff, History of the American Economy (any edition 7th through 12th; publication dates, 1996-2015). This is widely available under $10 in on-line used bookstores; I personally use the 8th edition (1998). This will be used mostly for background information. There also will be articles or book chapters assigned every week, as well as original documents. I expect you to read all articles and documents thoroughly and carefully. These will all be available on Blackboard, or can be found directly on JSTOR (via the Database Links on the Swem Library home page), or the journal publisher’s home page via Swem’s online catalog.
    [Show full text]
  • Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics After World War I
    FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF SAN FRANCISCO WORKING PAPER SERIES Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics after World War I Jose A. Lopez Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Kris James Mitchener Santa Clara University CAGE, CEPR, CES-ifo & NBER June 2018 Working Paper 2018-06 https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/working-papers/2018/06/ Suggested citation: Lopez, Jose A., Kris James Mitchener. 2018. “Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics after World War I,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper 2018-06. https://doi.org/10.24148/wp2018-06 The views in this paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Uncertainty and Hyperinflation: European Inflation Dynamics after World War I Jose A. Lopez Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Kris James Mitchener Santa Clara University CAGE, CEPR, CES-ifo & NBER* May 9, 2018 ABSTRACT. Fiscal deficits, elevated debt-to-GDP ratios, and high inflation rates suggest hyperinflation could have potentially emerged in many European countries after World War I. We demonstrate that economic policy uncertainty was instrumental in pushing a subset of European countries into hyperinflation shortly after the end of the war. Germany, Austria, Poland, and Hungary (GAPH) suffered from frequent uncertainty shocks – and correspondingly high levels of uncertainty – caused by protracted political negotiations over reparations payments, the apportionment of the Austro-Hungarian debt, and border disputes. In contrast, other European countries exhibited lower levels of measured uncertainty between 1919 and 1925, allowing them more capacity with which to implement credible commitments to their fiscal and monetary policies.
    [Show full text]
  • Thomas Edison Vs Nikola Tesla THOMAS EDISON VS NIKOLA TESLA
    M C SCIENTIFIC RIVALRIES PHERSON AND SCANDALS In the early 1880s, only a few wealthy people had electric lighting in their homes. Everyone else had to use more dangerous lighting, such as gas lamps. Eager companies wanted to be the first to supply electricity to more Americans. The early providers would set the standards—and reap great profits. Inventor THOMAS EDISON already had a leading role in the industry: he had in- vented the fi rst reliable electrical lightbulb. By 1882 his Edison Electric Light Company was distributing electricity using a system called direct current, or DC. But an inventor named NIKOLA TESLA challenged Edison. Tesla believed that an alternating cur- CURRENTS THE OF rent—or AC—system would be better. With an AC system, one power station could deliver electricity across many miles, compared to only about one mile for DC. Each inventor had his backers. Business tycoon George Westinghouse put his money behind Tesla and built AC power stations. Meanwhile, Edison and his DC backers said that AC could easily electrocute people. Edison believed this risk would sway public opinion toward DC power. The battle over which system would become standard became known as the War of the Currents. This book tells the story of that war and the ways in which both kinds of electric power changed the world. READ ABOUT ALL OF THE OF THE SCIENTIFIC RIVALRIES AND SCANDALS BATTLE OF THE DINOSAUR BONES: Othniel Charles Marsh vs Edward Drinker Cope DECODING OUR DNA: Craig Venter vs the Human Genome Project CURRENTS THE RACE TO DISCOVER THE
    [Show full text]
  • FUSION ENERGY FOUNDATION December 197^ $2.00/ .25
    MAGAZINE OF THE FUSION ENERGY FOUNDATION December 197^ $2.00/ .25 Steam Power How It Was Delayed 100 Years FUSION Features 26 Leibniz, Papin, and the Steam Engine: MAGAZINE Of THE FUSION ENERGY FOUNDATION A Case Study of British Sabotage Vol. 3, No. 3 Philip Valenti December 1979 ISSN 0148-0537 Impact Fusion: A New Look at an Old Idea Dr. John Schoonover 53 The North American Water and Power Alliance Proposal: Creating Water Resources for the Year 2000 Calvin Larson EDITORIAL STAFF News Editor-in-Chief Dr. Morris Levitt SPECIAL REPORT Associate Editor 8 Cambodia: The Destruction of a Civilization Dr. Steven Bardwell INTERNATIONAL Managing Editor 12 Mexican President Urges 'Power of Reason' to Resolve Marjorie Mazel Hecht Energy Crisis Fusion News Editor 13 Neporozhniy Dedicates First MHD Facility Charles B. Stevens 13 Saudi Oil Minister Endorses Fusion 13 New Soviet Plan Puts Science First Energy News Editors William Engdahl 14 Brazil's Energy—Nuclear or Biogas Marsha Freeman 14 FEF Designs Nuclear Plan for India NATIONAL Editorial Assistant Christina Nelson Huth 15 Shutdown of Hanford Facility Threatens Cancer Research 16 TVA Head Says 'No' to Nuclear Art Director Christopher Sloan 16 Meat Processors Urge U.S. to Co Nuclear WASHINGTON Assistant Art Director 17 FEF Postcard Campaign: Put Fusion On Line by 1995 Deborah Asch 17 McCormack Submits Add-On to Fusion Budget Graphics Assistants 18 Rep. Wydler Defuses Nuclear Safety Hysteria Gillian Cowdery 18 Presidential Commission May Call for Nuclear Moratorium Gary Genazzio 19 GAO Pans Fusion as 'Unknown' Advertising Manager FUSION NEWS Norman Pearl 21 Soviets Report Promising Results with Field-Reversed Fusion Subscription and 22 Sandia Shows Progress with Light Ion Beams Circulation Manager 22 Livermore Proposes New Fusion Approach Cynthia Parsons 22 PLT Scientists Report Observation of Thermonuclear Neutrons FUSION is published monthly, 10 times a year except CONFERENCES September and April, by the Fusion Energy Foundation 24 The Beginning of a Determinist Theory of Turbulence (FEF), 888 7th Ave., 24th Floor.
    [Show full text]
  • Download File
    Downloaded from https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537781400001444 474 Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era / October 2009 Who Were the Gilders? And Other Seldom-Asked Questions about https://www.cambridge.org/core Business, Technology, and Political Economy in the United States, 1877- 1900 . By Richard K John, Columbia University Columbia University - Law Library Historians of the United States have for many decades termed the late nineteenth century the "Gilded Age." No consensus exists as to when this period began and ended, or how it might best be characterized. Most textbook authors place the origins of the Gilded Age around 1877 and its demise around 1900. Few would deny that this period witnessed a host of epochal , on innovations that included the rise of the modern industrial corporation, 03 Sep 2019 at 14:52:04 the building of large-scale technical systems, including the electric power grid, and the creation of governmental institutions that were conducive to rapid industrialization. Yet the significance of these innovations remained a matter of dispute. This essay contends that no synthetic account of the late nineteenth-century United States that aspires to be at all comprehensive , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at can ignore these innovations—innovations that have come to be known by various names such as the "managerial revolution," the "Second Industrial Revolution," and "modernization."1 It further contends that the reluctance of some of the most respected historians of business, technology, and political economy to embrace the Gilded Age construct raises questions about its utility as a periodizing device.2 'Robert J.
    [Show full text]
  • How the House of Morgan Cooperated to Develop the Large-Cap US Multinational Corporation, 1895-1913
    How the House of Morgan Cooperated to Develop the Large-Cap US Multinational Corporation, 1895-1913 The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Sawe, Joseph. 2015. How the House of Morgan Cooperated to Develop the Large-Cap US Multinational Corporation, 1895-1913. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:24078367 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA ! How the House of Morgan Cooperated to Develop the Large-Cap US Multinational Corporation, 1895-1913 Joseph Sawe A Thesis in the Field of International Relations for the Degree of Master of Liberal Arts in Extension Studies Harvard University November 2015 ! ! ! ! ! ! Abstract The following investigation is intended to determine how the large-cap US multinational corporation was further advanced during the pivotal years of 1895-1913 by a leading private unincorporated institution—House of Morgan. Historical review and assessment focused on the broader US society, government, monetary landscape, the House of Morgan, leading large cap US multinationals; looking at both the key organizations and underlying people in power. The report framework focuses upon the development of the US super structure within which all major companies work down to the way actual institutions organize economic assets in the form of a multinational corporation. Questions that have been considered include: how was business conducted globally with so little formal mechanisms in place, the importance of the various forms of capital for business, and the various roles politics played in business development.
    [Show full text]
  • Engineering Economy for Economists
    AC 2008-2866: ENGINEERING ECONOMY FOR ECONOMISTS Peter Boerger, Engineering Economic Associates, LLC Peter Boerger is an independent consultant specializing in solving problems that incorporate both technological and economic aspects. He has worked and published for over 20 years on the interface between engineering, economics and public policy. His education began with an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, adding a Master of Science degree in a program of Technology and Public Policy from Purdue University and a Ph.D. in Engineering Economics from the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue University. His firm, Engineering Economic Associates, is located in Indianapolis, IN. Page 13.503.1 Page © American Society for Engineering Education, 2008 Engineering Economy for Economists 1. Abstract The purpose of engineering economics is generally accepted to be helping engineers (and others) to make decisions regarding capital investment decisions. A less recognized but potentially fruitful purpose is to help economists better understand the workings of the economy by providing an engineering (as opposed to econometric) view of the underlying workings of the economy. This paper provides a review of some literature related to this topic and some thoughts on moving forward in this area. 2. Introduction Engineering economy is inherently an interdisciplinary field, sitting, as the name implies, between engineering and some aspect of economics. One has only to look at the range of academic departments represented by contributors to The Engineering Economist to see the many fields with which engineering economy already relates. As with other interdisciplinary fields, engineering economy has the promise of huge advancements and the risk of not having a well-defined “home base”—the risk of losing resources during hard times in competition with other academic departments/specialties within the same department.
    [Show full text]
  • Hydro Internal Combustion Engine
    International Journal of Mechanical And Production Engineering, ISSN: 2320-2092, Volume- 2, Issue- 7, July-2014 HYDRO INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINE SAMEET KESHARI PATI Student, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2nd year, Gandhi Engineering College, Bhubaneswar, Odisha E-mail: [email protected] Abstract- Focus of this study is to give and describe the details of research and workings on hydro IC engine. Hydro IC engine is an engine which would work with water as its fuel. The objective of this work is to decrease the use of non-renewable resources. The world’s population is expected to expand from about 6 billion people to 10 billion people by the year 2050, all striving for a better quality of life. As the Earth’s population grows, so will the demand for energy and the benefits that it brings improved standards of living, better health and longer life expectancy, improved literacy and opportunity, and many others. For the Earth to support its population, we must increase the use of energy supplies that are clean, safe, and cost-effective. This concept of Hydro IC engine works on temperature exchange between two chemical substances which continuously react among themselves and helps us to derive mechanical energy out of it. This concept of engine is based upon a modified version of a normal two stroke engine. This engine consists of piston and cylinder arrangement. The most important thing in this complete work is that this method doesn’t produce any kind of exhaust gases or chemical compounds out of it in the complete cycle. This engine works continuously by using this chemical substance which do not get depleted and could be used again and again.
    [Show full text]
  • JP Morgan and the Money Trust
    FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF ST. LOUIS ECONOMIC EDUCATION The Panic of 1907: J.P. Morgan and the Money Trust Lesson Author Mary Fuchs Standards and Benchmarks (see page 47) Lesson Description The Panic of 1907 was a financial crisis set off by a series of bad banking decisions and a frenzy of withdrawals caused by public distrust of the banking system. J.P. Morgan, along with other wealthy Wall Street bankers, loaned their own funds to save the coun- try from a severe financial crisis. But what happens when a single man, or small group of men, have the power to control the finances of a country? In this lesson, students will learn about the Panic of 1907 and the measures Morgan used to finance and save the major banks and trust companies. Students will also practice close reading to analyze texts from the Pujo hearings, newspapers, and reactionary articles to develop an evidence- based argument about whether or not a money trust—a Morgan-led cartel—existed. Grade Level 10-12 Concepts Bank run Bank panic Cartel Central bank Liquidity Money trust Monopoly Sherman Antitrust Act Trust ©2015, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Permission is granted to reprint or photocopy this lesson in its entirety for educational purposes, provided the user credits the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, www.stlouisfed.org/education. 1 Lesson Plan The Panic of 1907: J.P. Morgan and the Money Trust Time Required 100-120 minutes Compelling Question What did J.P. Morgan have to do with the founding of the Federal Reserve? Objectives Students will • define bank run, bank panic, monopoly, central bank, cartel, and liquidity; • explain the Panic of 1907 and the events leading up to the panic; • analyze the Sherman Antitrust Act; • explain how monopolies worked in the early 20th-century banking industry; • develop an evidence-based argument about whether or not a money trust—a Morgan-led cartel—existed • explain how J.P.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Economic Inequality in Illinois
    The History of Economic Inequality in Illinois 1850 – 2014 March 4, 2016 Frank Manzo IV, M.P.P. Policy Director Illinois Economic Policy Institute www.illinoisepi.org The History of Economic Inequality in Illinois EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This Illinois Economic Policy Institute study is the first ever historical analysis of economic inequality in Illinois. Illinois blossomed from a small agricultural economy into the transportation, manufacturing, and financial hub of the Midwest. Illinois has had a history of sustained population growth. Since 2000, the state’s population has grown by over 460,000 individuals. As of 2014, 63 percent of Illinois’ population resides in a metropolitan area and 24 percent have a bachelor’s degree or more – both historical highs. The share of Illinois’ population that is working has increased over time. Today, 66 percent of Illinois’ residents are in the labor force, up from 57 percent just five decades ago. Employment in Illinois has shifted, however, to a service economy. While one-third of the state’s workforce was in manufacturing in 1950, the industry only employs one-in-ten Illinois workers today. As manufacturing has declined, so too has the state’s labor movement: Illinois’ union coverage rate has fallen by 0.3 percentage points per year since 1983. The decade with the lowest property wealth inequality and lowest income inequality in Illinois was generally the 1960s. In these years, the Top 1 Percent of homes were 2.2 times as valuable as the median home and the Top 1 Percent of workers earned at least 3.4 times as much as the median worker.
    [Show full text]
  • ECON 8764-001 History of Economic Development
    History of Economic Development Economics 8764-001 Fall 2012 Tuesday & Thursday 12:30-1:45 pm, Econ 5. Professor Carol H. Shiue, email [email protected], Econ 206B, Tue & Thur 2-3 p.m. Course Outline Overview This course examines competing explanations for cross-country differences in long run economic growth, addressing the question, “why are some countries so rich and other so poor” from a historical and comparative standpoint. The core issues that we examine cover the Middle Ages to the 20th century and focus attention on Britain and Northwestern Europe because that is where economic growth first occurred. Knowledge of standard analytical tools and empirical techniques of macro and micro is strongly recommended. This course has several objectives: the first is to show how theoretical approaches and quantitative tools can be applied to historical evidence. The second objective is to introduce students to research and paper writing in economic history and other applied fields of economics. We will be reading and discussing articles to learn how a research article is put together. You will also have many opportunities in this class to pose your own questions and present your ideas. This is a skill that is of immense value as you start to enter into the dissertation-writing phase of your program and will be spending more of your time doing research in economics. With practice, you will also feel more comfortable and confident in seminars, whether the seminar is your own or someone else’s. Course Requirements Classes will consist of lecture and student presentation and discussion.
    [Show full text]