ECONOMIC HISTORY FIELD EXAM
U.C. BERKELEY
JANUARY 2008
DO THREE OF 12:
1. According to Angus Maddison's historical GDP estimates, China had higher per capita
incomes than Europe prior to 1500--as did India. Qualitative accounts similarly suggest that the
Chinese economy was more technologically advanced than the European economy. Yet the first
industrial revolution took place in Europe, not in China or India (or the Middle East). How do
historians explain this surprising result? Which of their explanations do you find most
convincing?
2. In his presidential address to the American Economic Association, Robert Mundell blames the
Great Depression of the 1930s on a global gold shortage. Prices had risen between 1913 and
1925, but global gold supplies had not, which placed deflationary pressure on the world
economy. Does Mundell's explanation for the Depression hold water? Are there reasons to
doubt it? Are there alternative explanations which are more compelling?
3. Both economists (Acemoglu, Johnson and Robinson) and economic historians (Engerman and
Sokoloff) have sought to rehabilitate the classic argument that colonialism shaped the
development possibilities of different parts of the world. Do their arguments capture the
principal channels through which colonialism shaped development prospects? Are they
convincing? What do they leave out?
4. It is now 40 years since Peter Temin wrote his classic article on the debate over labor scarcity
and the "American system." Many subsequent studies have addressed this topic. How much of
the labor-scarcity paradigm survives this reassessment? If you were to teach the labor-scarcity
debate to first-year graduate students, how would you characterize it?
5. Friedman and Schwartz, Romer and Romer, and Richardson and Troost all emphasize the
usefulness of natural experiments in identifying the real effects of monetary policy shocks. What
dangers or pitfalls do you see in relying on such an approach? Can you suggest solutions or
partial remedies to some of these dangers?
6. There is much discussion of the dollar as an international currency: will it lose its dominant
role as a reserve, vehicle and international investment currency to the euro, the yen or the yuan?
What does the history of international currencies tell us about the prospects?
7. In the fifteenth century the high civilization of Islam was richer, militarily stronger, and
politically better organized than the lands to its west (witness Mehmed II's conquest of
Constantinople) and the lands to its east (witness Babur's conquest of the Indo-Gangetic plain).
The story since, however, has been one of nearly unbroken relative economic decline. What can
economic historians say that is of any use in understanding this nearly unbroken relative
economic decline?
