Econ 210a: Fall 2006: Trade and the Industrious Revolution Major Headings

Oct. 25. Trade and the Industrious Revolution:

Avner Greif (1989), "Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders," Journal of Economic History 49:4 (December), pp. 857-882 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28198912%2949%3A4%3C857%3ARACIMT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M

• How is "trade without law" possible?
• How much "trade without law" can there be?
• What would Ronald Coase say about this situation?
• Are game-theoretic models of these kinds of interactions adequate?
  • What if you have no insular, despised ethnic group around?

J. Bradford DeLong and Andrei Shleifer (1993), "Princes and Merchants: City Growth Before the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Law and Economics 36:5 (Oct), pp. 671-702 http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/archives/000638.html.

• Why isn't monarchy good enough?
  • Hobbes called it "Leviathan"
  • Mancur Olson called it a "stationary bandit"
  • Why do DeLong and Shleifer say that "Leviathan" alone is insufficient?
• How strong is DLS's empirical evidence, really?
• Why should "merchants" be different from "princes"?
  • The peculiar status of the European city...
  • Why so few "merchants" elsewhere in the early-modern world?
    • China
    • India
    • Middle East (Ibn Khaldun)

Jan de Vries (1994), "The Industrious Revolution and the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Economic History 54:2 (June), pp. 249-70 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507%28199406%2954%3A2%3C249%3ATIRATI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8

• What, exactly, changes to make the "industrious revolution" possible?
• What did peasants do in the evening before the "industrious revolution"?
• What did they do afterwards?
• How large can these effects plausibly be?
  • What is an "entre-preneur"?

Adam Smith (1776), The Wealth of Nations, Book I and Book V http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWNtoc.html

• The literature of "political oeconomy"
• "The system of natural liberty" as a game-changing insight
• How reliant is Book V on Book I?