First Summer School of the GLOBALEURONET ESF Research Networking Programme and Marie Curie Research Training Network

’Unifying the European Experience’ Economic Growth in the Extremely Long Run Supported by the European Historical Economics Society

27 June 1 July 2006

Hosted by: EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE

Villa Schifanoia 50133, Florence, Italy

Academic Organizers

Kevin O’Rourke (Trinity College Dublin)

Steve Broadberry (University of Warwick)

Giovanni Federico (EUI, local organizer)

Stefano Battilossi (Universidad Carlos III Madrid)

Scientific Summary

In recent years, there has been a burgeoning interest on the part of the economics profession in economic growth, including the question of what determines economic growth rates over the very long run (i.e. centuries or more). While economists have developed a series of models trying to understand the mechanisms involved in shifting the European economy from a relatively low growth regime (usually characterised as 'Malthusian') to a regime of high and sustained levels of growth (usually characterised as the 'modern' growth regime), economic historians have made major advances in documenting the basic facts about long run economic growth which such theories should seek to explain. Since understanding long run growth has always been one of the core activities of our field, these trends in modern growth economics offer a welcome opportunity for economic historians to make an impact on the economics profession more generally.

Programme

The Summer School has a duration of 6 days. Each day there will be two main lectures by invited speakers (one in the morning, one in the afternoon), followed by multiple sessions in which Ph.D.students will present and discuss their research papers with senior scholars.

The lead speaker for this Summer School, Gregory Clark (UC Davis, USA), is one of the most influential economic historians working in this area today, and is the author of a series of pathbreaking papers extending our empirical understanding of economic growth back into medieval times. Along with other speakers at this summer school, he has been actively engaged in challenging growth economists'; stylised facts, as well as their preferred explanations. This summer school will seek to introduce students to the current research frontier in this area.

Other invited speakers:

Joerg Baten (University of Tuebingen, Germany, member of GLOBALEURONET)

Sevket Pamuk (Bosphorus University, Turkey, member of GLOBALEURONET)

Kevin O’Rourke (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, member of GLOBALEURONET)

Bob Allen (Oxford University, UK)

Hans Joachim

Voth (Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain)

Approximately 30 Ph.D. and postdoc students have been selected for attendance, 50% of whom affiliated to GLOBALEURONET participating institutions.