2023-2024 Schedule
All meetings on Fridays from 2 pm to 4 pm unless otherwise noted. All meetings in the History Department Lounge (CH209) with the exceptions (see below). Queries to Dan Raff (raff@wharton.upenn.edu).
Series Opening Event
On Friday, September 29th from 12:30pm through 4 pm, the Penn Economic History Forum will host a symposium on Richard Langlois’s recent The Corporation and the Twentieth Century: The History of American Business Enterprise (Princeton, 2023). The book is major piece of scholarship. Its subject is the coming of the managerial corporation (“managerial capitalism”) and what followed. It can be understood as an unusually broadly framed and sustained attack on the picture of these subjects presented in Alfred Chandler’s celebrated and once authoritative work The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Harvard, 1977) and subsequent publications. It is without question a deeply considered attempt at revision of the conventional wisdom.
A pdf file of the opening (and summary) chapter of the book is available via the PEHF webpage and will be sent directly to everyone on the seminar list-serv and everyone outside the university who identifies themselves via a note to the organizer as raff@wharton.upenn.edu. Those who would like to review a pdf of the Epilogue chapter prior to the symposium should email the organizer directly. Copies of the book itself, which is lengthy because detailed, can be conveniently obtained directly from the Princeton University Press via its website or from Amazon. Use code LANG30 for 30% off the list price on the Princeton website. (Amazon is offering 10% on its US site as of this writing, though if you have Amazon Prime you would not have to pay for shipping.)
The plan on the day is for formal commentaries from Brian Cheffins (Cambridge University), Alexander Field (Santa Clara University), Patrick Fridenson (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales), Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale and Michigan), Laura Phillips Sawyer (Georgia), and, family obligations permitting, Mark Roe (Harvard), a brief response from the author, and then extended discussion from the audience.
The meeting will take place in the History Department Lounge (College Hall 209) on the Penn campus in Philadelphia. There will be a buffet lunch on offer from noon East Coast time and refreshments from time to time during the course of the event. All are welcome to attend (but please signal intent to raff@wharton.upenn.edu so that an accurate headcount for food [and chairs!] can be made). There will also be a Zoom link (but once again please signal intent so that sufficient capacity can be made available) and with it scope for asking and otherwise raising questions. NB that we intend to record the Zoom and make the recording accessible starting a few days after the event via the seminar website for anyone who is interested but has a conflict on the day.
Upcoming dates
November 10th date rescheduled for February 9, 2023
December 8, 2023: Lee Vinsel (Virginia Tech), "Join Us in Preparing People for Tomorrow’s Jobs”: Robert Reich, the “New Economy,” and Nonliberal Human Capital Policies
January 26, 2024: Philip Scranton (Rutgers University), "War Horsepower: Managing Military Trucks under Capitalism and Communism, 1941-1955"
February 9, 2024: Ron Harris (Tel-Aviv University, visiting the Institute for Advanced Study)
Readings (in order): Overview, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8
February 23, 2024: Tobias Straumann (Zurich University), "Who paid Hitler’s debts? The United States, Israel and the great bargain of 1952"
March 29, 2024: Debjani Bhattacharya (Zurich University), "Climate Futures' Past: Law and Insurance in the Indian Ocean World, 1770-1850"
April 12, 2024: Colleen Dunlavy (Wisconsin), "How Government Made the U.S. into a Manufacturing Powerhouse"
April 26, 2024: Sofya Salomatina (Moscow State University), "Commercial Banking in the Russian Empire
in the Period 1860–1913: Development and Market Integration"
2022-2023 Schedule
September 30: Brent Cebul [Penn History] and Michael Glass [Boston College History]
“Mortgaging Out: FHA Credit Policy and the Remaking of Metropolitan America”
October 28: Jack Brown [UVa School of Engineering and Applied Science, Division of Technology, Culture, and Communication]
The Uses and Abuses of History: Three Chapters on US vs. Terminal Railroad
November 18: Adam Leeds [Columbia Slavic Languages] (Annual joint meeting with the kruzhok)
“‘State Socialism,’ ‘State Capitalism,’ ‘War Communism’: On Marxism’s Transformation into a Statism, 1876-1936” <Annual joint meeting with the Penn Russian History and Culture Workshop>
December 9: Marc Flandreau [Penn History]
“Pari Passu Lost and Found: An Essay on the Origins of Sovereign Bankruptcy (1798-1873)”
January 20: Rescheduled for April 28, 2023
February 17: Alejandra Irigoin [LSE]
“Walking the (Respondentia) Walk: Instruments for Trade Finance in the Early Modern Global Economy”
March 17: Maylis Avaro [Penn History]
"A Gold Battle? De Gaulle and the Dollar Hegemony during the Bretton Woods Era".
March 24: Harold James [Princeton]
Symposium on Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises that Shaped Globalization (New Haven: Yale University Press, February 2023)
April 14: Charlotte Bartels [Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung]
“Wealth and its Distribution in Germany 1895-2018”
April 28: Michael McMillen [Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt, & Mosle and Penn Law]
“The Confluence: Origins and Development of Equipment Finance”
2019-2020 Schedule
Sept. 20: D'Maris Coffman, UCL Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management
"Financing the Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666”
Nov. 8 Timothy Guinnane, Yale Economics,
"Creating a new legal form: The GmbH"
Dec. 6: Kathryn Hemphill, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
“Historical Perspectives on State and Federal Interventions Into Casualty Loss Insurance, 1870s to the Present”
Jan. 24: This meeting has been cancelled.
Feb. 21 Margo Todd, Penn History,
"Financing Urban Poor Relief in Early Modern Scotland”
Per University instructions, the meetings below will not take place on the planned dates. We hope to reschedule in the future.
CANCELLED----March 27 Stefan Link, Dartmouth History
Business as Political Action: The Ford-GM Rivalry in the 1920's and the Limits of 'Embeddedness'
This meeting in College Hall 205
CANCELLED----April 3: Sofya Salomatina, Moscow Lomonosov State University
“Commercial banking in the Russian Empire in 1860-1913: development and markets integration’”
April 17 Peter Temin, MIT
"Inclusive American Economic History: Containing Slaves, Freedmen, Jim Crow Laws, and the Great Migration."
April 24: Martin Giradeau, Sciences Po Centre de Sociologie des Organisations
“The Invention of Entrepreneurship”
2018-2019 Schedule
September 14
Britannia's Achilles--or the Strategic Implication of Globalization in the Wheat Trade (PDF)
Nick Lambert, US Naval Academy
October 5
**Note: This meeting will run from 12:30PM-4:30PM. There will be a buffet lunch available.
Symposium on ms: Leviathan Denied
John Wallis, University of Maryland
November 2
Financing the Louisiana Purchase (PDF)
Larry Neal, University of Illinois
November 16
The Sources of Growth in a Technologically Progressive Economy: The United States, 1899-1941
Gerben Baker, LSE
December 4
**Note: This meeting will run from 6:00PM-8:00PM on a Tuesday in College Hall 209. A sandwich supper will be provided.
The Bolsheviks, Money, and the International Origins of the NEP
Oscar Sibony-Sanchez, University of Hong Kong
December 7
Giving (The British) Empire the Business: Corporations and Colonialism in the Nineteenth-Century "Age of Reform"
Phil Stern, Duke University
January 18
Introduction and draft of chapters of ms: Citizen Savers: An Entrepreneurial History of the Market for Personal Finance in the United States (PDF)
Dan Wadhwani, University of the Pacific
February 1
Draft from The Banker's Thumb: A History of US Banking Supervision from the Civil War to Dodd-Frank
Peter Conti-Brown, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania
and
Sean Vanatta, Princeton University
February 22
Growth and Globalization Phases in Southeast Asian Development Since the Late Nineteenth Century
Gregg Huff, Pembroke College, Oxford
March 22
**Note: This meeting be in College Hall 205 and will run from 12:30PM-4:30PM. There will be a buffet lunch available.
Symposium on ms of Daniel Raff: Business History Among the Social Sciences
Daniel Raff, University of Pennsylvania
Those interested in attending should email Dan Raff (raff@wharton.upenn.edu) for a copy of the text
April 5
**Note: This meeting be in College Hall 205
Beyond the Fraudulent Man: Opening the Black-Box of Poyais 1820-1823
Damian Clavel, University of Pennsylvania postdoctoral fellow
**Please note that the April 26, 2019 Penn Economic History Forum has been cancelled.
2017-2018
September 29, 2017
12:00pm-2:00pm
College Hall 209
Tyler Anbinder, George Washington
Simone Wegge, CUNY Graduate Center + College of Staten Island)
“The Savings, Mobility, and Networks of New York’s Irish Famine Immigrants: Preliminary Evidence from the Emigrant Savings Bank”
October 27, 2017
2:00pm-4:00pm
College Hall 205
John Styles, University of Hertfordshire and Huntington Library
“Fibres, Fashion and Innovation: Rethinking the British Industrial Revolution”
Fibres, fashion and marketing: textile innovation in early-modern Europe
What was Cotton? Fibers, Markets and Technology in the British Industrial Revolution
November 10, 2017
2:00pm-4:00pm
2034 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich
Natalya Vinokurova, The Wharton School
"Evolving the Panda's Thumb: The Case of the Land Ownership Recording System in the United States."
December 1, 2017
2:00pm-4:00pm
College Hall 209
Kristy Ironside, McGill
“Money in the late Soviet Union”
**Joint with the Penn кружок (Russian History and Culture Workshop)
January 26, 2018
2:00pm-4:00pm
College Hall 209
Philip Scranton, Rutgers
“Enterprise Practice in Communist Commerce & Industry: The People's Republic of China, 1952-62”
A Business History of Communism: Enterprise and Practice in China, 1950-1971
February 16, 2018
2:00pm-4:00pm
College Hall 209
Nadia Berenstein, Penn
“The Sciences of Flavor and the Industrialization of Food in America”
March 23, 2018
2:00pm-4:00pm
College Hall 209
Veronica Santarosa, University of Michigan Law School
“Contracts without Courts: The Value of Contractual Protection in an Era of Absolute Sovereign Immunity”
April 17, 2018
12:00pm-1:20pm
2039 Steinberg-Dietrich Hall
Rui Esteves, Department of Economics, Oxford University
The Rise of New Corruption: British MP's during the Railway Mania of 1845 (PDF)
2016-2017
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum are held on Fridays, 2:00-4:00 in the History Department Lounge, College Hall 209 unless otherwise noted. All are welcome.
Co-Conveners:
Moritz Schularick, U Bonn
"No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870-2012"
(NB: Anomalously, September rather than October and a Thursday rather than a Friday--all the others are in the usual time-frame and time slot.)
Hugh Rockoff, Rutgers
"It's Always the Shadow Banks: The Failures that Ignited America's Greatest Financial Panics"
Eric Hilt, Wellesley College
“Economic History, Historical Analysis and the "New History of Capitalism."
Julia Ott, The New School
"Incentives for Capital! The Curious History of the Capital Gains Tax Preference"
Veronica Santarosa, University of Michigan Law School
"Financial Intermediation before Modern Deposit Banks: Evidence from a Brokerage Law Reform in Eighteenth-Century Marseille"
Walter Licht, Penn
“The Rise and Embedding of the Corporation” [excerpts from Chapter 3, “Managing”, of American Capitalisms: A Global History (forthcoming)]
Roger Stern, Tulsa, visiting Penn
“The Strategy of Illusions: Oil Scarcity Ideology and America’s Path to the Middle East”
Oscar Gelderblom, Utrecht University
“Public Functions, Private Markets: Credit Registration by Aldermen and Notaries in the Low Countries, 1500-1800” (joint with Mark Hup and Joost Jonker)
Debjani Bhattacharya, Drexel
“The Calculus of Planning: Politicizing the Economic Question in India, 1930 to 1951”
Alessandro Stanziani, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris
“Russia in global history, 1750-1917” (PDF)
2015-16
October 2 *College Hall 219*
Stephen Mihm (U. Georgia, Department of History)
“The Weights of the State: Metrology and Commerce in Nineteenth-Century America”
November 6
Alan Anderson (President, Energy Planning, Inc.)
“Uneven Playing Fields”Enron and the Transformation of the U.S. Natural Gas Industry, 1968-2001”
December 4
Will Goetzmann (Yale SOM)
“The Development of Corporate Governance in Toulouse, 1372-1946”
January 22
Julia Ott (New School, Department of History)
From Labor to Capital: The Forgotten History of the Tax Preference for “Earned” Income
February 19
Lynn Lees (Penn, Department of History)
“Planting Empire”
March 18 *2:30pm in College Hall 209*
Steven Harris (University of Mary Washington, Department of History and American Studies)
"Cold War Friendly Skies: Pan Am, Aeroflot and the Political Economy of Détente"
*Joint with Russian History & Culture Workshop
April 15
Michael Gilsenan (NYU, Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies Center)
‘Trusts in the Family: An Arab business dynasty in colonial Singapore 1880-1960’
Introduction (PDF)
Paper (PDF)
2014-2015
*Please note this is a provisional schedule. The dates are fixed, but sessions may be added.
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum are held on Fridays, 2:00-4:00 in the History Department Lounge, College Hall 209 unless otherwise noted. All are welcome.
Convener:
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania):
raff@wharton.upenn.edu
October 3, 2014
John Wallis (Co-author, Doug North), University of Maryland
“Leviathan Denied: Coordination, Coercion, Rules, and the Nature of Government”
October 23, 2014 (3:00pm, Fisher-Bennett 231)
Akinobu Kuroda, Tokyo University Institute for Advanced Studies of Asia
"The Character of Money"
November 14, 2014
Corinna Schlombs, RIT
“Productivity Paradox Precluded: Computing at the German Allianz Insurance Company”
December 5, 2014
Len Rosenband, Utah State Emeritus
"The Industrious Revolution: A Concept Too Many?"
January 30, 2015
Anne O'Donnell, Harvard Postdoc
"Building a Visible Hand: The Search for Value in Revolutionary Russia, 1917-1921"
Session Co-sponsored with the Russian History & Culture Workshop
February 27, 2015
Mark Rose, Florida Atlantic University
"Bill Clinton and the Politics of Bank Deregulation"
April 10, 2015
Angus Burgin, Johns Hopkins
“The Postindustrial Moment: Automation and the End of Work”
2013-2014
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum are held on Fridays, 2:00-4:00 in the History Department Lounge, College Hall 209 unless otherwise noted. All are welcome.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
September 27, 2013
Esther Sahle, London School of Economics
"The competitive edge of the reliable Friends? Contract enforcement among London Quakers, c. 1660-1800"
October 18, 2013
Walter Licht, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
“A Mercantilist Outpost [Chapter 1 of American Capitalisms: A Global History]"
November 6, 2013
AnDrei Markevich (co-Author, Ekaterina Zhuravskaya), New economic School, Moscow
“Economic Consequences of Emancipation of Serfs: Evidence from Russia"
Session Co-sponsored with the Russian History & Culture Workshop, 4:30-6:00
January 24, 2014
Daniel Raff, Management Department, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
“What Became of Borders?"
February 21, 2014
Christopher Jones, School of Historical, Philosophic and Religious Studies, University of Arizona
"Energy as Politics: Energy Transitions and American Political Economy,1820-1930"(PDF)
March 21, 2014
Caitlin Rosenthal, Department of History, University of California, Berkeley
A Calculating Atlantic: Distance, Management, and Moral Reckoning
April 25, 2014
Steve Hindle, W.M. Keck Foundation Director of Research, Huntington Library
"The Micro-Management of a Late Seventeenth Century English Landed Estate"
2012-2013
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2-4PM in the College Hall 209.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 5, 2012
Jake Soll, University of Southern California
"A French Revolution in Accounting? Printed Balance Sheets and the Origins of the Language of Political Accountability"
November 2, 2012
Albrecht Ritschl, London School of Economics
“Transfers Small, Debt Relief Big: The Marshall Plan and Postwar Germany"
This event is co-sponsored by the Penn Social Science & Policy Forum.
January 11, 2013
Ronald Schatz, Wesleyan University
“The National War Labor Board of World War II: A Re-Interpretation”
February 1, 2013
Adam Tooze, Yale University
“The Global Deflation of 1920-1921 and Interwar Reconstruction”
This event will be in 205 College Hall
February 22, 2013
Douglas Rogers, Yale University
“Oil Culture: Producing the New Russia”
This event is jointly sponsored with the Russian History & Culture Workshop.
February 26, 2013
Hilde Greefs, University of Antwerp and Centre for Urban History
"Reconnecting to the World: Maritime Trade in Antwerp After the Reopening of the River Scheldt in 1795"
This event will be from 12:00 to 1:15 PM in College Hall 209
March 15, 2013
Peter Coclanis, University of North Carolina
“White Rice: The Midwestern Origins of the Modern Rice Industry in the United States”
Note: This talk will be held in College Hall 219.
April 26, 2013
Philip Hoffman, California Institute of Technology
“Why Was It Europeans Who Conquered the World? Causes and Consequences”
April 29, 2013
Jeroen Puttevils, Centre for Urban History, University of Antwerp, Visiting Fulbright Scholar, University of Pennsylvania, Department of History
“I'll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak” Debt finance through bills obligatory in sixteenth-century Antwerp.
This event will be from 12:00 to 1:30 PM in College Hall 209
2011-2012
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2-4PM in the College Hall 209.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
November 4, 2011
Steven Nafziger, Department of Economics, Williams College
"Serfdom, Emancipation, and Off-Farm Labor Mobility in Tsarist Russia"
December 2, 2011
Michael Zakim, Department of History, Tel Aviv University
“Producing Capitalism: The Clerk at Work"
January 27, 2012
Thomas Max Safley, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
“Social Networks and South German Capital: Reflections on a Current Fashion”
February 3, 2012
Gary Gerstle, Department of History, Vanderbilt University
“Public Power, Private Power, and the Construction of the American State”
February 24, 2012
Daniel Raff, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and NBER
“The Oxford University Press from the 1890s through 2004: An Anti-Whig Evolutionary Economic History”
March 16, 2012
Joshua Getzler, St. Hugh’s College, Oxford and University of Pennsylvania Law School
“Charity and Welfare in the Long 18th Century: Church, Courts, and Parliament in Contest”
Note: This talk will be held in College Hall 219.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Peter Stabel, University of Antwerp, Belgium
"Working Women and Guildsmen in the Flemish Textile Industries (13th and 14th century): Gender, Labor and the European Marriage Pattern in an Era of Economic Change"
This talk will be held at 4:30PM in CH 209 and is sponsored by the Penn Economic History Forum, the Medieval-Renaissance Reading Group and the History Department.
April 20, 2012
Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Department of Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology
“Inherited- versus Self-Made Wealth in Paris 1872-1937”
2010-2011
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2-4PM in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 8, 2010
Edward Balleison, Department of History, Duke University
“Policing Business Fraud in the United States”
November 5, 2010
David Ludden, Department of History, New York University
"Uneven Development, Spatial Inequity, and Territorial Politics: Remapping 1905 in Bengal and Assam"
NOTE: This event will be held in College Hall 209.
December 3, 2010
Robert DuPlessis, Department of History, Swarthmore College
“Consumer Credit and Consumers Without Credit in Colonial North America”
January 28, 2011
Se Yan, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University
“Big BRICs, Weak Foundations: The Beginning of Public Elementary Education in Brazil, Russia, India, and China, 1880–1930”
NOTE: This event will be held in College Hall 209.
February 25, 2011
Emma Rothschild, Department of History, Harvard University and Magdalene College, Cambridge
“The Inner Life of Empires" (tentative)
March 25, 2011
Robert Geraci, University of Virginia
Faith Hillis, University of Chicago
Jessica Goldberg, University of Pennsylvania
“Foreign Trade, Foreign Capital, and Low Economic Self-Esteem in Late Tsarist Russia"
NOTE: This event will be held in College Hall 209.
April 22, 2011
Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“Price Behaviour in the Roman Empire”
NOTE: This event will be held in College Hall 209.
2009-2010
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2-4PM in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 2, 2009
Jonathan Levy, Department of History, Princeton University
"Farmers and Risk: The Fate of Landed Independence in 19th Century America"
November 6, 2009
Ekaterina Pravilova, Department of History, Princeton University
"Public Goods and the Censure of Private Property in Imperial Russia"
Note that due to an event connected to Homecoming on the 6th , this session will meet in College Hall 209.
December 4, 2009
Anne Sudrow, Technische Universität München and Deutsches Museum
"'Product Line Analysis': A Comparative Approach to the Social History of Products in a Global Perspective"
January 22, 2010
Marina Martin, Department of History and Macmillen Center South Asian Studies Program, Yale University
"Hundi in the Dock: The Impact of the British Indian Courts on a South Asian Indigenous Credit Institution"
February 19, 2010
Claire Priest, Law School, Yale University
"Understanding the End of Entail: Information, Institutions, and Slavery in the American Revolutionary Period"
April 2, 2010
Mary O'Sullivan, Management Department, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
"Bonding and Sharing Corporate America : The US Securities Markets, Industrial Dynamics and Corporate Development, 1885-1930"
DISCUSSANTS:
Jeff Fear, University of Redlands
Dan Raff, University of Pennsylvania
April 23, 2010
Warren Whatley, Department of Economics, University of Michigan
"The Impact of the Slave Trade on African Economies"
Please note that the time and venue will be different for this session: 12:00 - 2:00 PM, in the Bowman Room at the back of Suite 2000 of the Steinberg-Dietrich Building (brown-bag lunch).
2008-2009
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2-4PM in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 3, 2008
Richard White, Margaret Bryne Professor of American History, Stanford University
“Kilkenny Cats: Transcontinental railroads, destructive competition, and the odd road to North American modernity”
November 7, 2008
Francesca Carnevali, Senior Lecturer in Modern History, University of Birmingham
“Communities of Interest. Social capital and trade associations in England and America in the late 19 th century”
December 5, 2008
Gavin Wright, William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, Stanford University
"Economics and the Civil Rights Revolution"
January 23, 2009
Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University
“Movements and markets in the first millennium: information, containers and shipwrecks”
February 13, 2009
Yanni Kotsonis, Associate Professor of Russian and European History, New York University
"The Old Regime and Economic Liberalism: Tax Reform and the Emergence of the Idea of an Economy in Nineteenth Century”
March 6, 2009
Andrew Godley, Professor of Management, University of Reading
'The Chicken, the Factory Farm, and the Supermarket: Technological Innovation and Vertical Restraints in Poultry Farming in Britain, Australia and the United States, 1950-1980”
This event has been CANCELLED.
April 3, 2009
Howell Harris, Professor of History, Durham University
“What Price Competition? Cooperative Associationalism in the US Stove Industry, c. 1870-1925”
2007-2008
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2-4PM in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 5, 2007
Bill Summerhill, Department of History, University of California-Los Angeles
"The Origins of Economic Backwardness in Nineteenth-Century Brazil"
November 9, 2007
Alan Olmstead, Department of Economics, University of California-Davis
"Wait a Cotton-Pickin' Minute! A New View of Slave Productivity"
December 7, 2007
Jessica Goldberg, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
"Principals and Agents? Re-Thinking Relations between Merchants from the Cairo Geniza"
January 18, 2008
Leon Fink, Department of History, University of Illinois-Chicago
"Liberty before the Mast: The Nineteenth Century Sailor and the Political Narrative of Freedom"
February 15, 2008
Meir Kohn, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College
"The Expansion of Trade and the Development of European Industry to 1600"
March 7, 2008
John K. Brown, Department of Science, Technology, and Society, University of Virginia
"A Front Man for a Speculative Age: The Pennsylvania Railroad and the Rise of Andy Carnegie, 1864 - 1874"
April 4, 2008
Ghislaine Lydon, Department of History, University of California - Los Angeles
"A 'Paper Economy of Faith' without Faith in Paper: A Contribution to Understanding Islamic Institutional Constraints"
2006-2007
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2:00 - 4:00 P.M. in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library. Papers will be available by calling the History Department of the University of Pennsylvania at (215) 898-8452 or on this site.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (History Department, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 6, 2006
Lawrence Mitchell, School of Law, George Washington University
"The Rise of American Corporate Capitalism"
November 10, 2006
Molly Greene, Department of History, Princeton University
"Networks of Protection in the Early Modern Mediterranean"
December 1, 2006
Patrick O'Brien, Economic History Department, London School of Economics
"The Formation of a Mercantilist State and the Economic Growth of the United Kingdom, 1453-1815"
January 19, 2007
Timothy Leunig, Economic History Department, London School of Economics
"Transport improvements, agglomeration economies and city productivity: at what point did motorised transport raise British wages?"
February 9, 2007
Prasannan Parthasarathi, Department of History, Boston College
"Trade and industry in the Indian Subcontinent, 1750-1913"
March 2, 2007
Bruce Carruthers, Department of Sociology, Northwestern University
"The Mechanization of Trust: Credit Rating in 19th-c. America"
April 6, 2007
William St. Clair, Senior Research Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge
"The Political Economy of Reading"
2005-2006
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2:00 - 4:00 P.M. in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library. Papers will be available by calling the History Department of the University of Pennsylvania at (215) 898-8452 or on this site.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (History Department, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 7, 2005
William Collins, Department of Economics, Vanderbilt University
"The Economic Aftermath of the 1960's Riots: Evidence from Property Values"
November 11, 2005
Paul Duguid, School of Information Management and Systems, University of California-Berkeley
"Brands in Chains: The History of Trademarks and the Management of Supply Chains in Nineteenth Century Britain and Twentieth Century Silicon Valley"
December 9, 2005
Nathan Ensmenger, Department of the History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania
"The Computer Boys Take Over: The Organizational Politics of Technological Expertise, 1952-1968"
January 20, 2006
Philip Scranton, Rutgers University, Department of History and Hagley Museum and Library
"Technology-Led Innovation: Jet Engines, Cold War Contracting, and the Dilemmas of Science"
February 17, 2006
Regina Blaszczyk, Hagley Museum and Library
"The Color Revolution: Innovations in 20th Century Fashion and Marketing"
February 20, 2006
Richard von Glahn, Department of History, University of California, Los Angeles
"Foreign Silver Coins and Market Culture in 19th-Century China"
Hosted by the Department of History, The Center for East Asian Studies and the Penn Economic History Forum
March 24, 2006
Steven Topik, Department of History, University of California-Irvine
"Historicizing Commodity Chains. Thinking About Things, Structures, Systems and Especially Coffee"
April 14, 2006
David Washbrook, St. Anthony's College, Oxford
"Colonialism and Capitalism in South Asia"
2004-2005
All sessions of the Penn Economic History Forum, unless otherwise noted, will be held from 2:00 - 4:00 P.M. in the Lea Library on the 6th Floor of the Van Pelt Library. Papers will be available by calling the History Department of the University of Pennsylvania at (215) 898-8452 or on this site.
Co-Conveners:
Walter Licht (History Department, University of Pennsylvania)
Daniel Raff (Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania)
October 1, 2004
Peter Lindert, Department of Economics, UC-Davis
"Preliminary Global Price Comparisons, 1500-1870"
November 12, 2004
Mary O'Sullivan, INSEAD Strategy
"Living with the U.S. Financial System: The Experiences of General Electric and Westinghouse in the Last Century"
December 20, 2004
Michael Gilsenan, Department of Middle Eastern Studies, New York University
"A Trust in the Family: Arab Kinship, English Law, and the Transmission of Property in Colonial Singapore"
January 21, 2005
Margaret Levenstein, Office of Survey Research, University of Michigan
"Financing Invention during the Second Industrial Revolution: Cleveland, Ohio, 1870-1920"
February 18, 2005
Walter Licht, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
"Facing Economic Decline: The Pennsylvania Anthracite Region in the Twentieth Century -- The Responses and Roles of Organized Capital and Labor"
March 18, 2005
Carol Heim, Department of Economics, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
"Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, and Urban Growth in Phoenix"
April 15, 2005
Lynn Lees, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania
"Constructing Colonial Spaces in British Malaya: Alternative Worlds of Town and Plantation"
2003-2004
October 3, 2003
Katherine van Wezel Stone, Law School and Industrial and Labor Relations School, Cornell University
"Widgets to Digits and the Legal Regulation of the Workplace in its Historical Context"
November 7, 2003
Frederick M. Scherer, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
"Intellectual Property in Music Composition, 1750-1900"
December 12, 2003
Robert Vitalis, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
"A History of ARAMCO, Saudi Arabia, and the World Oil Frontier, 1940-1960: Days of the Cadillac (Ayyam al-Kadalak)"
January 30, 2004
Eric Orts, Department of Legal Studies, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
"Historical Perspectives on a Social Theory of the Business Enterprise"
February 13, 2004
Harold James, Department of History, Princeton University
"Family Capitalism and Steel in a Comparative Perspective: Italy, France and Germany"
March 5, 2004
Daniel Raff, Department of Management, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
"Three Sites of Transformation in the Very Modern History of the Book"
April 9, 2004
Ron Harris, School of Law, Tel Aviv University
"Institutional Innovation and Theories of the Firm: The Formation of the East India Company"