And we are now launched, with a new preparation for a new course: a Royal Road into the millennia of global economic history, hopefully designed for both humanists and quants who want an...
Without doing the reading yet, I want to jump in at question 3: "How far did you get in the long DeLong Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century reading?" Read it all without skimming years back. Great read! "And what is the single thing in it you read that resonates in the front of your mind?" A: 1870 1870 1870. Still resonating.
I have a ton of questions.
1. 1870 isn't apparent in Angus Madison's *The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective*. His inflection point appears to be 1820, consistent with traditional emphasis on the industrial revolution. Is this an artifact of his analysis? (His charts tend to display straight lines before 1890). Drill into data issues. Redo charts with a Slouching perspective.
2. From memory 1870 is a rough date for the introduction of corporate research, corporate marketing, corporate logistics, etc. As a review and referring to Chandler, list those components. Then allocate the change in growth to these various components. Actively consider possible interactions between them. No, I don't know whether these components can be plausibly isolated, since they all appear at roughly the same time.
3. 1870 as the beginning of modern growth is a extra-wide broad brush concept.
3a. The US had a head start, since its resource abundance permitted higher growth ~100 years prior. Right? Explain with numbers.
4. Before 1870, force and fraud was the prevalent method of social organization and the Malthusian curse of economic growth being absorbed by population increase characterized the economy. I'd like to know the extent to which the former is a necessary feature of the latter. I'd like to know about the empirical exceptions to this general rule, and the failure rates/estimated lifespan of these exceptions under the Malthusian Curse. Rolling back to number 2, what would the prospects be of breaking out of the Malthusian Curse under conditions of say, Renaissance merchant capitalism?
5. In the unlikely event that the Malthusian curse reappears over the next 1000 years, are we thoroughly forked?
New subscriber, here. I’ve been trying to limit my Substack subscriptions but can’t resist the promise of your posts on global economic history. Should be fun -
No, but I firmly intend to run a parallel version on the SubStack, throwing out all teaching materials (including lecture notes and anonymized discussion summaries), plus whatever energy I can spare to reply to comments:
> Gustavo Miotti: So do you know if the course will be available to non Berkley students?
The links shown as ostensibly to Berkeley are actually non-functional links to this site (file not found). - Of course the Berkeley URLs won't work here for other reasons.
Without doing the reading yet, I want to jump in at question 3: "How far did you get in the long DeLong Slouching Towards Utopia: The Economic History of the Twentieth Century reading?" Read it all without skimming years back. Great read! "And what is the single thing in it you read that resonates in the front of your mind?" A: 1870 1870 1870. Still resonating.
I have a ton of questions.
1. 1870 isn't apparent in Angus Madison's *The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective*. His inflection point appears to be 1820, consistent with traditional emphasis on the industrial revolution. Is this an artifact of his analysis? (His charts tend to display straight lines before 1890). Drill into data issues. Redo charts with a Slouching perspective.
2. From memory 1870 is a rough date for the introduction of corporate research, corporate marketing, corporate logistics, etc. As a review and referring to Chandler, list those components. Then allocate the change in growth to these various components. Actively consider possible interactions between them. No, I don't know whether these components can be plausibly isolated, since they all appear at roughly the same time.
3. 1870 as the beginning of modern growth is a extra-wide broad brush concept.
3a. The US had a head start, since its resource abundance permitted higher growth ~100 years prior. Right? Explain with numbers.
4. Before 1870, force and fraud was the prevalent method of social organization and the Malthusian curse of economic growth being absorbed by population increase characterized the economy. I'd like to know the extent to which the former is a necessary feature of the latter. I'd like to know about the empirical exceptions to this general rule, and the failure rates/estimated lifespan of these exceptions under the Malthusian Curse. Rolling back to number 2, what would the prospects be of breaking out of the Malthusian Curse under conditions of say, Renaissance merchant capitalism?
5. In the unlikely event that the Malthusian curse reappears over the next 1000 years, are we thoroughly forked?
I am looking forward to following along and participating in any way I can...
Youth, they say is wasted on the young.
What a great course you've outlined here, Professor.
Ah to be an Undergrad at UC Berkeley.
Capitalism, for all its faults, allowed humanity to keep 9x the population alive for years and years with rapidly declining birth rates.
An ahistoric phenomenon worthy of the celebration in your Slouching.
How well it manages declining populations will be a very different test.
New subscriber, here. I’ve been trying to limit my Substack subscriptions but can’t resist the promise of your posts on global economic history. Should be fun -
So do you know if the course will be available to non Berkley students?
No, but I firmly intend to run a parallel version on the SubStack, throwing out all teaching materials (including lecture notes and anonymized discussion summaries), plus whatever energy I can spare to reply to comments:
> Gustavo Miotti: So do you know if the course will be available to non Berkley students?
< https://braddelong.substack.com/p/quantitative-long-run-global-economic >
Course Welcome Email is not working
The links shown as ostensibly to Berkeley are actually non-functional links to this site (file not found). - Of course the Berkeley URLs won't work here for other reasons.