Topics in US and international economic history

This graduate course emphasizes theoretical and empirical methods for studying long-run economic change, with a focus on the forces that drive progress and the barriers that prevent it from being broadly shared. Drawing on historical evidence and economic analysis, we investigate how societies have generated - and distributed - economic opportunity, and what lessons the past provides for the future. While the evidence will span various periods of American history, the course will not cover those periods chronologically but rather focus on critical analysis of specific questions and mechanisms of change.