The handbook of historical economics / edited by Alberto Bisin, Giovanni Federico.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part 1. What is historical economics. The economic history of economic history: the evolution of a field in economics -- The two revolutions in economic history -- History as evolution -- Part 2. Sources and methods. Historical data: where to find them, how to use them -- The use of archaeological data in economics -- Ethnographic and field data in historical economics -- Historical econometrics: instrumental variables and regression discontinuity designs -- Historical natural experiments: bridging economics and economic history -- Persistence -- myth and mystery -- LATE for history -- Dynamic general equilibrium modeling of Ing short-run historical events -- Money, banking, and old-school historical economics -- Institutional change and institutional persistence -- How institutions and cultures change: an evolutionary perspective -- State power and conflict driven evolution -- Culture, institutions, and policy -- Phase diagrams in historical economics: culture and institutions -- Part 3. Topics. The economic history of commodity market development -- Why Africa is not that poor -- Religion in economic history: a survey -- Persistent failure? International interventions since World War Il -- The ancient origins of the wealth of nations -- Social mobility in historical economics -- The industrial revolution and the great divergence: recent findings from historical national accounting -- Attitudes, aptitudes, and the roots of the great enrichment -- The interplay among wages, technology, and globalization: the labor market and inequality, 1620-2020 -- Debt and taxes in eight U.S. wars and two insurrections -- Biogeography, writing, and the origins of the state -- The wife's protector: a quantitative theory linking contraceptive technology with the decline in marriage.

"The Handbook of Historical Economics guides students and researchers through a quantitative economic history that uses fully up-to-date econometric methods. The book's coverage of statistics applied to the social sciences makes it invaluable to a broad readership. As new sources and applications of data in every economic field are enabling economists to ask and answer new fundamental questions, this book presents an up-to-date reference on the topics at hand."--Publisher's description