Diversity in Economic History

Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, in Nashville, Tennessee, September 11-13, 2015

The theme for EHA 2015 is “diversity” in economic history. Diversity refers to differences in economic outcomes by race, ethnicity or tribal group, religion, location within countries (for example, urban vs. rural, or North vs. South), gender, and other attributes and how these evolve over the course of economic development. Papers documenting these differences in historical settings are an integral part of the program, as are papers that measure the impact of various institutions or government policies (for example, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States) or that examine long run trends in economic inequality more broadly construed.

Graduate students are encouraged to attend the meeting. The Association offers subsidies for travel, hotel, registration, and meals, including a special graduate student dinner. For more information refer to the Call for Papers.

The online registration system for the 2015 Annual Meetings is closed.

You may register onsite at the meetings.

You can find information on the travel and other practical matters in the Meetings Brochure that you can download here: EHA 2015 Brochure. The full conference booklet can be found here: EHA 2015 FULL PROGRAM BOOKLET. You can explore Nashville dining options by perusing the restaurant guide here: GuidetoSelectedNashvilleRestaurants. You can also explore the great Nashville attractions here: NashvilleToDo. The full papers will be linked to the program in late August, along with further program details.

Final Schedule:

FRIDAY

1:00pm – 2:30pm Sessions

1. Race and Economic Outcomes in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Chair: Robert A. Margo (Boston University)

Richard Baker (The College of New Jersey), ”School Resources and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from Early Twentieth-Century Georgia”

William Collins (Vanderbilt University) and Marianne Wanamaker (University of Tennessee), “Intergenerational Mobility in the Shadow of Jim Crow”

Tim Larsen (Vanderbilt University), “The Strange Career of Jim Crow: Labor Scarcity and Racial Treatment in the Postbellum South”

Discussants:

Baker: Trevon Logan (Ohio State University)

Collins and Wanamaker: Robert A. Margo (Boston University)

Larsen: Ellora Derenoncourt (Harvard University)

2. Innovation

Chair: Carola Frydman (Boston University)

Michela Giorcelli (Stanford University), “The Effect of Management and Technology Diffusion on Firm Productivity: Evidence from the US Marshall Plan in Italy”

Francesco Cinnirella (Ifo Institute, Munich) and Jochen Streb (University of Mannheim), “Religious Diversity and Innovation: Historical Evidence from Patenting Activity”

Elisabeth Perlman (Boston University), “Dense Enough To Be Brilliant: Patents, Urbanization, and Transportation in Nineteenth Century America Market Access”

Discussants:

Giorcelli: Carola Frydman (Boston University)

Cinnirella: Mark Koyama (George Mason University)

Perlman: Dan Bogart (UC-Irvine)

3:00pm – 4:30pm Sessions

3. Finance and Housing Prices

Chair: Jeremy Atack (Vanderbilt University)

Jason Barr (Rutgers University) and Fred Smith (Davidson College), “What’s Manhattan Worth? A Land Value Index from 1950 to 2013”

Katharina Knoll (Free University of Berlin), Moritz Schularick (University of Bonn), and Thomas Steger (University of Leipzig), “No Price Like Home: Global House Prices, 1870-2012”

Ronan Lyons (Trinity College Dublin), “Measuring house prices in the long run: Insights from Dublin, 1900-2015”

Discussants:

Barr and Smith: Carlos Villarreal (University of Chicago)

Knoll et al: Trevor Kollmann (RMIT)

Lyons: Kenneth Snowden  (UNC-Greensboro)

4. Public Health Interventions

Chair: Werner Troesken (University of Pittsburgh)

Marcella Alsan (Stanford University) and Claudia Goldin (Harvard University), “Watersheds in Infant Mortality: The Role of Effective Water and Sewage Infrastructure, 1880-1915”

Jonathan Fox (Freie Universitaet Berlin), “Origins and Effects of Rural Public Health Programs in North Carolina”

Walker Hanlon (UCLA), “Pollution and Mortality in the Nineteenth Century”

Discussants:

Alsan and Goldin: Joshua Lewis (University of Montreal)

Fox: Carolyn Moehling (Rutgers)

Hanlon: Werner Troesken (University of Pittsburgh)

5. Colonial Africa

Chair: Timothy Guinnane (Yale University)

Jutta Bolt (University of Groningen) and Leigh Gardner (LSE), “De-compressing history? Pre-colonial institutions and Local Government Finance in British colonial Africa”

Federico Tadei (Bocconi University), “Colonial Trade and Price Gaps in Africa”

Marlous van Waijenburg (Northwestern University), “Financing the African Colonial State: The Revenue Imperative and Forced Labor”

Discussants:

Bolt and Gardner: Johan Fourie (University of Stellenbosch)

Tadei: Claudia Rei (Vanderbilt University)

van Waijenburg: Peter Lindert (UC-Davis)

4:45pm – 6.15pm Session

75^th Anniversary of EHA Panel: The Future of Economic History

Ran Abramitzky (Stanford University)

William Collins (Vanderbilt University)

Naomi Lamoreaux (Yale University)

Kris Mitchener (Santa Clara University)

SATURDAY

8:30am – 10:00am Sessions

6. Slave Owners in the Wake of Abolition

Chair: Alan Olmstead (UC-Davis)

Lisa D. Cook (Michigan State University), “The New National Lynching Data Set”

Christian Dippel (UCLA) and Jean Paul Carvalho (UC Irvine), “The Iron Law of Oligarchy: The Post-Slavery Caribbean Sugar Colonies”

Brandon Dupont (Western Washington University) and Joshua Rosenbloom (University of Kansas), “The Impact of the Civil War on Southern Wealth Mobility”

Discussants:

Cook: Gavin Wright (Stanford)

Dippel and Carvalho: Alan Dye (Barnard College)

Dupont and Rosenbloom: John Parman (College of William and Mary)

7. Off Wall Street: Finance and Banking in the 19^th Century US

Chair: Alexander Field (Santa Clara University)

Christopher Cotter (Vanderbilt University), “Railroad Failures and the Panic of 1873”

Manuel Alejandro Bautista Gonzalez (Columbia University), “A City between Nations: Domestic and Foreign Currencies in New Orleans, Interregional and External Trade of the Antebellum South, 1856-1860”

Haeilim Park (United States Treasury) and John Bluedorn (IMF), “Stopping Contagion with Bank Bailouts: Micro-Evidence from Pennsylvania Bank Networks during the Panic of 1884”

Discussants:

Cotter: Benjamin Chabot (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)

Bautista Gonzalez: Matt Jaremski (Colgate University)

Park and Bluedorn: Mary Rodgers (SUNY-Oswego)

8. The Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in Historical Perspective

Chair: Tomas Cvrcek (University College London)

Vincent Bignon (Bank of France) and Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa (Aix-Marseille University and CESifo), “Protectionism and the Education–Fertility Tradeoff in Late 19th Century France”

Gregory Clark (UC Davis) and Neil Cummins (LSE), “The Child Quality-Quantity Tradeoff, England, 1750-1880: Is a Fundamental Component of the Economic Theory of Growth Missing?”

Claude Diebolt (University of Strasbourg), Tapas Mishra (University of Southampton), and Faustine Perrin (Lund University), “Clio’s Role for Economic Growth: New Findings on the Quantity-Quality Tradeoff in 19^th Century France”

Discussants:

Bignon and Garcia-Penalosa: Paul Sharp (University of Southern Denmark)

Clark and Cummins: Tomas Cvrcek (University College London)

Diebolt and Perrin: Philipp Ager (University of Southern Denmark)

10:30am – 12:00pm Sessions

9. Women in Marriage and Labor Markets

Chair: Elyce Rotella (Indiana University Bloomington)

Joyce Burnette (Wabash College) and Maria Stanfors (Lund University), “The Gender Gap in Turn of the Century Swedish Manufacturing”

Martin Dribe (Lund University), Björn Eriksson (Lund University), and Francesco Scalone (University of Bologna), “Migration, Marriage and Social Mobility. Women in Sweden during Industrialization”

Marc Goni (University of Vienna), “Assortative Matching and Persistent Inequality: Evidence from the World’s Most Exclusive Marriage Market”

Discussants:

Burnette and Stanfors: Jessica Bean (Denison University)

Dribe et al.: Laura Salisbury (York University)

Goni: Gregory Clark (UC-Davis)

10. Post-Colonial Africa

Chair: Warren Whatley (University of Michigan)

Johan Fourie (Stellenbosch University) and Alfonso Herranz-Loncan (University of Barcelona), “The efficiency of Cape Colony railways and the origins of racial inequality”

Sara Lowes (Harvard University) and Eduardo Montero (Harvard University), “Blood Rubber: The Effects of Labor Coercion on Development and Culture in the DRC”

Johannes Norling (University of Michigan), “Family Planning and Fertility in South Africa under Apartheid”

Discussants:

Fourie and Herranz-Loncan: Marlous van Waijenburg (Northwestern University)

Lowes and Montero: Leigh Gardner (London School of Economics)

Norling: Marianne Wanamaker (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)

11. Inequality in the Long Run

Chair: Kirsten Wandschneider (Occidental College)

Guido Alfani (Bocconi University) and Sergio Sardone (Bocconi University), “Long Term Trends in Economic Inequality in Southern Italy”

Simone Wegge (College of Staten Island & The Graduate Center), “Inequality in Wealth: Evidence from Land Ownership in Mid-19^th Century Germany”

Se Yan (Peking University), “Civil Exams and Social Mobility: Jinshi’s Exam Performances and Official Careers in Ming China (1368-1644)”

Discussants:

Alfani and Sardone: Yannay Spitzer (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Wegge: Kirsten Wandschneider (Occidental College)

Yan: Cong Liu (University of Arizona)

4:30pm – 5.45pm

Plenary Session: Contemporary Inequality in the United States

Martha Bailey (University of Michigan)

Gary Solon (Michigan State University)

Jacob Vigdor (University of Washington)

6pm – 7pm

Presidential Address: 

Obama, Katrina, and the Persistence of Racial Inequality

Robert Margo (Boston University)

SUNDAY

8:30am – 10:00am Sessions

12. Institutions and Long-Term Development

Chair: Dan Bogart (UC-Irvine)

Carlos Alvarez-Nogal (Universidad Carlos III) and Christopher Chamley (Boston University), “Crecimientos: refinancing the Public Debt in Castile before 1600”

Paul Dower (New Economic School-Moscow), Evgeny Finkel (George Washington University), Scott Gehlbach (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Steven Nafziger (Williams College), “Collective Action and Representation in Autocracies: Evidence from Russia’s Great Reforms”

Dongwoo Yoo (West Virginia University), “Mapping and Economic Development: Spatial Information Matters”

Discussants:

Alvarez-Nogal and Chamley: Philip Hoffman (Caltech)

Dower et al: Amanda Gregg (Middlebury College)

Yoo: Noam Yuchtman (UC-Berkeley)

13. Migration in Economic History

Chair: William Collins (Vanderbilt University)

Rowena Gray (UC-Merced), “Evaluating a Great Migration: Chain Migration and its Influence on Housing Prices in New York City, 1880-1950”

Jason Long (Wheaton College) and Henry Siu (University of British Columbia), “Refugees from Dust and Shrinking Land: Tracking the Dust Bowl Migrants”

James Siodla (Colby College), “Making the Move: The impact of the 1906 Disaster on Business Relocations and Industry Clustering”

Discussants:

Gray: Katharine Shester (Washington and Lee University)

Long and Siu: Katherine Eriksson (California Polytechnic State University)

Siodla: Edson Severnini (Carnegie Mellon University)

14. Slavery: The Terms of Entrenchment

Chair: Paul Rhode (University of Michigan)

Elena Esposito (European University Institute), “Side Effects of Immunities: the African Slave Trade”

Conor Lennon (University of Pittsburgh), “The Impact of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act on Slave Prices”

Mohamed Saleh (Toulouse School of Economics), “The Cotton Boom, Slavery, and Land Inequality in the Nineteenth-Century Rural Egypt”

Discussants:

Esposito: Walker Hanlon (UCLA)

Lennon: Jonathan Pritchett (Tulane University)

Saleh: Eric Chaney (Harvard University)

10:30am – 12:00pm Sessions

15. Transmission of Culture

Chair: Leonard Carlson (Emory University)

Vasiliki Fouka (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), “Backlash: The Unintended Effects of Language Prohibition in US schools after World War l”

Melinda Miller (U.S. Naval Academy), “Assimilation and Economic Performance: The Case of Federal Indian Policy”

Trevor Kollman (RMIT University), “Racial Segregation in the Interwar United States: A Dynamic Segregation Approach”

Discussants:

Fouka: Richard Hornbeck (University of Chicago)

Miller: David M. Wishart (Wittenberg University)

Valencia: Justin Bucciferro (Eastern Washington University)

16. U.S. Policy Effects in the Great Depression and World War II

Chair: Price Fishback (University of Arizona)

Daniel K. Fetter (Wellesley College) and Lee Lockwood (Northwestern University), “Means-tested Old Age Support and Private Behavior: Evidence from the Old Age Assistance Program”

Sebastian Fleitas (University of Arizona), Price Fishback (University of Arizona), and Kenneth Snowden (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), “Why Does Recovery from Mortgage Credit Crises Take So Long? Institutional Causes of Delay in Liquidation of Troubled Building and Loans During the Great Depression”

Taylor Jaworski (Queen’s University), “World War II and the Industrialization of the American South”

Discussants:

Fetter and Lockwood: Andrew Goodman-Bacon (University of Michigan)

Fleitas et al: Joshua Hausman (University of Michigan)

Jaworski: Dominick Bartelme (UC-Berkeley)

CONFERENCE ENDS AT NOON.

THE CUTOFF DATE FOR RESERVATIONS IS AUGUST 10, 2015!

The conference is hotel is the Sheraton Downtown Nashville located in the heart of the city.

You can see all the specifics about the hotel here:  http://www.sheratonnashvilledowntown.com/

Moreover, you can find more information about the area here: http://www.sheratonnashvilledowntown.com/things-to-do-in-nashville.

The conference rate is $169 per night (single or double room), plus tax.

RESERVATION INSTRUCTIONS:

To ensure the accuracy of your reservations, please make reservations in one of the following two ways.

To ensure the accuracy of your reservation, please make reservations in one of the following two ways.

1. By booking online here.

2. By calling Sheraton reservations at 1-888-627- 8565. Please be sure to request to book rooms with the Economic History Association 2015 Annual Conference to receive the discounted group rate. The deadline for receiving the group rate is August 10, 2015. *Note: Hotel space is always at a premium at the EHA meetings, so please reserve your room early to ensure availability.

If you experience any difficulties in making your reservations, please contact Jari Eloranta (elorantaj@appstate.edu).

HOW TO GET TO NASHVILLE AND THE HOTEL:

Information on all the travel options to the hotel can be found here:

http://www.sheratonnashvilledowntown.com/.

The closest airport is the Nashville International Airport: http://www.flynashville.com/. You can find ground transportation options here: https://www.flynashville.com/ground-transportation.

Another option is an airport shuttle. There are several companies that provide this kind of service. The EHA does not endorse any in particular—we urge you to look for them online. The official shuttle company of the airport is this one: http://www.jarmontransportation.com/home.html.

Parking at the hotel is $24 per day (self, $26 for valet) for conference attendees.

ATTRACTIONS AND THINGS TO DO:

Nashville is a great city for eating out and enjoying live music, among other things. If you want to explore the varieties of restaurants in the downtown area, see the suggestions contained here: GuidetoSelectedNashvilleRestaurants. For various downtown attractions, see these (among others): NashvilleToDo.

Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, in Nashville, Tennessee, September 11-13, 2015

The theme for EHA 2015 is “diversity” in economic history. Diversity refers to differences in economic outcomes by race, ethnicity or tribal group, religion, location within countries (for example, urban vs. rural, or North vs. South), gender, and other attributes and how these evolve over the course of economic development. Papers documenting these differences in historical settings have been selected as part of the program, as are papers that measure the impact of various institutions or government policies (for example, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States) or that examine long run trends in economic inequality more broadly construed.

The Program Committee (Martha Bailey, University of Michigan (chair), together with Tomas Cvrcek, Theresa Gutberlet, and Suresh Naidu) has finished making their selections and all the submitters have been told of the selection. Individuals who presented or co-authored a paper given at the 2014 meeting are not eligible for inclusion in the 2015 program. Moreover, those that have been accepted as part of the program need to send the Meetings Coordinator Jari Eloranta an updated abstract by July 15.

Paper and session submissions are now closed.

Graduate students are encouraged to attend the meeting. The Association offers subsidies for travel, hotel, registration, and meals, including a special graduate student dinner. A poster session welcomes work from dissertations in progress. Applications for the poster session are now closed. The decisions will be forthcoming in mid-June latest. Those students wishing to just attend the meetings need to contact the Meetings Coordinator.

The dissertation session, convened by Marianne Wanamaker (University of Tennessee) and Eric Chaney (Harvard University), will honor six dissertations completed during the 2014-2015 academic year. The submission deadline has now passed and no more submissions will be accepted. The Alexander Gerschenkron and Allan Nevins prizes will be awarded to the best dissertations on non-North American and North American topics respectively. Dissertations must be submitted as a single PDF file. Files of less than 5 MB in size may be sent directly to the conveners as an email attachment. All dissertation competition submitters will be notified whether they were selected as finalists in mid-July.