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Economic history

Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and institutions. The field can encompass a wide variety of topics, including equality, finance, technology, labour, and business. It emphasizes historicizing the economy itself, analyzing it as a dynamic entity and attempting to provide insights into the way it is structured and conceived.

This article is about the academic field. For actual economic histories, see Economic history of the world. For the history of intellectual development of economic theory, see History of economic thought.

Using both quantitative data and qualitative sources, economic historians emphasize understanding the historical context in which major economic events take place. They often focus on the institutional dynamics of systems of production, labor, and capital, as well as the economy's impact on society, culture, and language. Scholars of the discipline may approach their analysis from the perspective of different schools of economic thought, such as mainstream economics, Austrian economics, Marxian economics, the Chicago school of economics, and Keynesian economics.


Economic history has several sub-disciplines. Historical methods are commonly applied in financial and business history, which overlap with areas of social history such as demographic and labor history. In the sub-discipline of cliometrics, economists use quantitative (econometric) methods.[1] In history of capitalism, historians explain economic historical issues and processes from a historical point of view.[2]

Academic journals and societies[edit]

The first journal specializing in the field of economic history was The Economic History Review, founded in 1927, as the main publication of the Economic History Society. The first journal featured a publication by Professor Sir William Ashley, the first Professor of Economic History in the English-speaking world, who described the emerging field of economic history. The discipline existed alongside long-standing fields such as political history, religious history, and military history as one that focused on humans' interactions with 'visible happenings'. He continued, '[economic history] primarily and unless expressly extended, the history of actual human practice with respect to the material basis of life. The visible happenings with regard-to use the old formula-to "the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth" form our wide enough field'.[40]


Later, the Economic History Association established another academic journal, The Journal of Economic History, in 1941 as a way of expanding the discipline in the United States.[41] The first president of the Economic History Association, Edwin F. Gay, described the aim of economic history was to provide new perspectives in the economics and history disciplines: 'An adequate equipment with two skills, that of the historian and the economist, is not easily acquired, but experience shows that it is both necessary and possible'.[42] Other related academic journals have broadened the lens with which economic history is studied. These interdisciplinary journals include the Business History Review, European Review of Economic History, Enterprise and Society, and Financial History Review.


The International Economic History Association, an association of close to 50 member organizations, recognizes some of the major academic organizations dedicated to study of economic history: the Business History Conference, Economic History Association, Economic History Society, European Association of Business Historians, and the International Social History Association.[43]

won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ("the Nobel Memorial Prize") in 1971 "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development".

Simon Kuznets

whose early writing was on the field of economic history, won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1972 due to his contributions to general equilibrium theory and welfare theory.

John Hicks

won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1979 for his contributions in the field of economic development through historical context.

Arthur Lewis

won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1976 for "his achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy".

Milton Friedman

and Douglass North won the Nobel Memorial Prize in 1993 for "having renewed research in economic history by applying economic theory and quantitative methods in order to explain economic and institutional change".

Robert Fogel

who won the Nobel in 2023 for 'having advanced our understanding of women's labor market outcomes', began her career researching the history of the US southern economy and was President of the Economic History Association in 1999/2000.

Claudia Goldin

Several economists have won Nobel prizes for contributions to economic history or contributions to economics that are commonly applied in economic history.

The Road to Serfdom (1944)

Friedrich Hayek

Critical juncture theory

Economic History Association

Economic History Society

History of economic thought

History of capitalism

History of industrialisation

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