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The Achievements of the Cliometric School

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2010

Donald N. McCloskey
Donald N. McCloskey
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Extract

The members of the Association must be sick to death of “The Achievements of the Cliometric School.” The health of a field, it is said, is inversely proportional to the percentage of essays on method, by which standard cliometrics itself was sick to death in childhood and is only just now recovering. The few essays on method appearing nowadays are usually commissioned, lack revolutionary fervor, and have become as predictable as sportswriting: gee whiz, how extraordinary has been the growth of cliometrics; cliometrics, of course, is gravely limited by its attachment to neoclassical economics; do not be alarmed by counterfactuals. Essays on method, like articles on the sportspage, irritate the players (nobody loves a critic), flatter the owners (in whose pay he sometimes labors), and hearten the loyal fen (with the written equivalent of the chant “We're number one”). They foreshadow the post-season banquets and their awards: Most Valuable Scholar, Best Book Reviewer (Golden Glove), or, in another mode, Best Historian in a Supporting Role, and Farce of the Year.

Type
Papers Presented at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 13 - 28
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1978

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References

1 This, by the way, will be the first essay on cliometric method not to discuss counterfactuals. The possible discussions lack point.

2 Stone, Lawrence, “History and the Social Sciences in the Twentieth Century,” in Delzell, Charles F., ed., The Future of History: Essays in the Vanderbilt University Centennial Symposium (Nashville, 1977), pp. 24–25Google Scholar. Compare p. 30, a summary of, among several, Haskell's (but not C. Vann Woodward's) review in the New York Review of Books of Time on the Cross; or p. 33. It is an irony of historiography that the same volume contains a witty and penetrating yet generous assessment of Time on the Cross by someone knowledgeable (most would agree) in the field, Woodward himself (pp. 144–47).

3 “The Effect of the ‘Agricultural Depression’ on Industrial Demand in England, 1730–1750,” Economica (1975), 298–312. As will be the case elsewhere in the paper, Ippolito's is one hit chosen at random from many. The literature of cliometrics is by now so various and so large that the sportswriter is required to confine attention to a small sample. Even on the present narrow topic—models of general equilibrium applied to British growth in the eighteenth century—other cliometricians, Hueckel and Crafts in particular, have done important work. A complete bibliography of cliometrics is in preparation at the University of Chicago.

4 Temin, , “Labor Scarcity and the Problem of American Industrial Efficiency in the 1850s,” this Journal, 26 (1966), 277–98Google Scholar; Fogel, , “The Specification Problem in Economic History,” this Journal, 27 (1967), 283–308Google Scholar.

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10 “The Growth of Real Product in the United. States Before 1840: New Evidence and Controlled Conjectures,” this Journal, 27 (1967), 151–97.Google Scholar

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13 Compare Purdue Faculty Papers in Economic History (Homewood, Ill., 1967) with, say, the first half of Rosovsky, Henry, ed., Industrialization in Two Systems: Essays in Honor of Alexander Gerschenkron by a Group of His Students (New York, 1966)Google Scholar. It would not be wholly mischievous to suggest that the two approaches, still alive today, take these mottoes: for the one, “Where-speculation ends—in real life—there real, positive science begins. … [O]ur difficulties begin only when we set about the observation and the arrangement—the real depiction—of our historical material” (Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, The German Ideology [1846, ed. of N:Y., 1963], p. 15)Google Scholar; for the other, [[I]n theoretical sciences like philosophy or economics … there is no empirical research; all must be achieved by the power to reflect, to meditate, and to reason] (von Mises, Ludwig, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics [New Haven, 1949], p. 869)Google Scholar. Method makes strange bedfellows.

14 Easterlin, , “Interregional Differences in Per Capita Income, Population, and Total Income, 1840–1950,” in Parker, W. N., ed., Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century, Conference on Research in Income and Wealth, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 24 (Princeton, 1960)Google Scholar; Gallman, , “Gross National Product in the United States, 1834–1906,” in Brady, D., ed., Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 30 (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; William Parker and Franklee Whartenby, “The Growth of Output Before 1840,” in Parker, ed., as cited; Anderson, Terry, “The Economic Growth of Seventeenth Century New England: A Measurement of Regional Income” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Washington, 1972Google Scholar; publ. now by the Arno Press); Kuznets, Simon, Capital in the American Economy, Its Formation and Financing, N.B.E.R. (Princeton, 1961)Google Scholar.

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16 Bairoch, Paul, “Europe's Gross National Product: 1800–1975,” Journal of European Economic History, 5 (1976), 273–340Google Scholar, attempts to collate some of these. His list on pp. 329–31 is one source for the assertion in the text. Others are: Kuznets, Simon, Modern Economic Growth: Rate, Structure, and Spread (New Haven, 1966), esp. p. 64Google Scholar; Gould, J. D., Economic Growth in History (London, 1972), esp. p. 22Google Scholar; and works cited in these.

17 Shepherd, J. F. and Walton, G. M., Shipping, Maritime Trade, and the Economic Development of Colonial North America (Cambridge, England, 1972)Google Scholar; Coelho, P. R. P. and Shepherd, J. F., “Regional Differences in Real Wages: The United States, 1851–1880,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976), 203–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 See the review article by Bordo, Michael D. and Schwartz, Anna J., “Issues in Monetary Economics and their Impact on Research in Economic History,” in Gallman, Robert, ed., Recent Developments in the Study of Economic and Business History: Essays in Memory of Herman E. Krooss, supplement 1 to Research in Economic History (Greenwich, Conn., 1977)Google Scholar.

19 Hyde, , Technological Change and the British Iron Industry, 1700–1870 (Princeton, 1977)Google Scholar, and Harley, , “Shipping and Shipbuilding in the Late Nineteenth Century” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Harvard Univ., 1972)Google Scholar, and related articles.

20 For example, North, , “Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600–1850,” Journal of Political Economy, 76 (1968), 953–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The most convenient collection of Davis' early work, as for other products of the Purdue School, is Purdue Faculty Papers in Economic History, as cited above. McGouldrick's, book is New England Textiles in the Nineteenth Century: Profits and Investment (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar.

22 Parker, , ed., The Structure of the Cotton Economy of the Antebellum South (Washington, D. C., 1970Google Scholar) uses the Parker-Gallman sample; see also Soltow, Lee, Men and Wealth in the United States, 1850–1870 (New Haven, 1975)Google Scholar and (among many others by the same authors) Bateman, F., Foust, James, and Weiss, Thomas, “Profitability in Southern Manufacturing: Estimates for 1860,” Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), 211–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The study by Bateman and Jeremy Atack of the accuracy of the published relative to the manuscript census is a good example of high standards of historical veracity in cliometrics (“Northern Agricultural Profitability: Some Preliminary Estimates,” Research in Economic History, 4 [1978], forthcoming)Google Scholar.

23 Engerman, Stanley, [Some Economic Issues Relating to Railroad Subsidies and the Evaluation of Land Grants,] this Journal, 32 (1972), 443–63Google Scholar, and works cited there; Rockoff, Hugh, [The Free Banking Era: A Reexamination,] Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, 6 (1974), 141–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McClelland, P. D., “The Cost to America of British Imperial Policy,] American Economic Review, 59 (Supplement, 1969), 370–81Google Scholar.

24 Smiley, Gene, “Interest Rate Movements in the United States, 1888–1913,” this Journal, 35 (1975), 591–620Google Scholar; James, John A., “The Development of the National Money Market, 1893–1911,” this Journal, 36 (1976), 878–97Google Scholar. Haddock, David D., “The Advent of Federal Regulation of Railroads,” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1978)Google Scholar; Ulen, Thomas, “The ICC as a Railroad Cartel Regulator: Was It Necessary?” (unpubl. chap, of Ph.D. diss., Stanford Univ., 1977)Google Scholar.

25 Higgs, Robert, Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy, 1865–1914 (Cambridge, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meeker, Edward and Kau, James, “Racial Discrimination and Occupational Attainment at the Turn of the Century,” Explorations in Economic History, 14 (1977), 250–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 LeVeen, E. P., “British Slave Trade Suppression Policies, 1821–1865: Impact and Implications” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1971)Google Scholar, and related papers.

27 Lance E. Davis, Richard A. Easterlin, William N. Parker, et al. (New York, 1972). A competing monument, handsome despite some cracks, is Williamson's, Jeffrey G.Late Nineteenth-Century American Development (Cambridge, England, 1974)Google Scholar.

28 Roehl, Richard, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976), 233–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. K. O'Brien and C. Keyder, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914, forthcoming.

29 Hawke, G. R., Railways and Economic Growth in England and Wales, 1840–1870 (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar; Metzer, Jacob, “Railroad Development and Market Integration: The Case of Tsarist Russia,” this Journal, 34 (1974), 529–50Google Scholar. Hawke, it should be noted, disputes the axiom.

30 Eddie, Scott, “The Terms and Patterns of Hungarian Foreign Trade, 1882–1913,” this Journal, 37 (1977), 329–57Google Scholar; and a recent series of dissertations by Thomas Huertas, Rolf Dumke, Steven Webb, and John Komlos.

31 Thomas, R. P. and Bean, R. N., “The Fishers of Men: The Profits of the Slave Trade,” this Journal, 34 (1974), 885–914Google Scholar; David Galenson, “Immigration and the Colonial Labor System: An Analysis of the Length of Indenture,” Explorations in Economic History, forthcoming.

32 Temin, Peter, Did Monetary Forces Cause the Great Depression? (New York, 1976)Google Scholar. Economists who imagine themselves immune from historiographical influences, by the way, should consider how completely Friedman and Schwartz broke the cake of intellectual custom on the Great Depression. Views on its history, and therefore on economics, that could be dismissed with a sneer in the early 1960s had now to be taken seriously. The extent to which forbidden thoughts may now be thought is well illustrated by an emerging interpretation of high unemployment in Britain during the 1920s as a result of—are you ready?—the dole: Daniel K. Benjamin and Levis A. Kochin, “Searching for an Explanation of Unemployment in Interwar Britain” (unpubl. paper, Univ. of Washington); and Easton, Stephen, “The English Poor Law and Unemployment during the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar.

33 A very small sample of a now very large literature might include, in addition to works mentioned elsewhere, Davis, Lance and North, D. C., Institutional Change and American Economic Growth (Cambridge, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reid, J. D. Jr., “Understanding Political Events in the New Economic History,” this Journal, 37 (1977), 302–28Google Scholar, and his contribution to this volume; Lindert, Peter and Williamson, Jeffrey, “Three Centuries of American Inequality,” in Research in Economic History, 1 (1976), 69–123Google Scholar; and Lee, R. D., ed., Population Patterns in the Past (New York, 1977)Google Scholar.

34 Morris, M. D., ed., “Symposium on Economic Change in Indian Agriculture,” in Explorations in Economic History, 12 (1975), 253–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with papers by John Hurd II, Michelle McAlpin, and Tom Kessinger. The Cambridge Economic History of India, Vol. II (Cambridge, forthcoming—Brahma volente) will contain more.

35 North, Douglass and Thomas, R. P., The Rise of the Western World (Cambridge, 1973)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Fenoaltea, S., “Risk, Transaction Costs, and the Organization of Medieval Agriculture,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976), 129–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Gunderson, Gerald, “Economic Change and the Demise of the Roman Empire,” Explorations in Economic History, 13 (1976), 43–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 To give some examples, occasionally exhaustive but more usually a scant handful representing many other works: Canada: Dick, Trevor O., “Frontiers in Canadian Economic History,” this Journal, 36 (1976), 34–39Google Scholar, and works cited there. Mexico: John Coatsworth, An Economic History of Mexico (New York, forthcoming), and works cited there. Brazil: Leff, Nathaniel H., “Long-Term Brazilian Economic Development,” this Journal, 29 (1969), 473–93Google Scholar; de Mello, Pedro, “The Economics of Labor in Brazilian Coffee Plantations, 1850–1888” (unpubl. Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Chicago, 1977)Google Scholar. Australia: Butlin, Noel G., Investment in Australian Economic Development 1861–1900 (Cambridge, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and recent issues of the Australian Economic History Review. Japan: Rosovsky, H. and Ohkawa, K., Japanese Economic Growth—Trend Acceleration in the Twentieth Century (Stanford, 1973)Google Scholar; Yamamura, Kozo, A Study of Samurai Income and Enterpreneurship (Cambridge, Mass., 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, among many works from the same hand; Kelley, A. C. and Williamson, J. G., Lessons from Japanese Development (Chicago, 1974)Google Scholar. China: Perkins, Dwight, ed., China's Modern Economy in Historical Perspective (Stanford, 1973)Google Scholar; Eckstein, Alexander, China's Economic Development (Ann Arbor, 1975)Google Scholar; Liu, Ts'ui-jung and Fei, J. C. H., “An Analysis of the Land Tax Burden in China, 1650–1865,” this Journal, 37 (1977), 359–81Google Scholar; the richness of Chinese historical statistics by comparison with European is astounding. India: see note 34 above. Russia: Arcadius Kahan, The Sokha, the Spindle and the Knout: Essays in the Economic History of Eighteenth Century Russia (forthcoming), and “The Growth of Capital in Russian Industrialization,” forthcoming in the Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. VII, as cited above. West Africa: H. A. Gemery and J. S. Hogendorn, eds., The Uncommon Market: Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (forthcoming). Israel: Gross, Nachum and Metzer, Jacob, “Public Finance in the Jewish Economy in the Interwar Period: The Expenditure Side,” in Research in Economic History, 3 (forthcoming, 1978)Google Scholar. Italy: Cohen, Jon S., “The 1927 Revaluation of the Lira: A Study in Political Economy,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 25 (1972), 642–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stefano Fenoaltea, Italian Industrial Production, 1861–1913 and Public Policy and Italian Industrial Development, 1861–1913: A New Economic History (both forthcoming); Toniolo, Gianni, ed., Lo sviluppo economico italiano 1861–1940 (Bari, 1973)Google Scholar; Rapp, R. T., Industry and Economic Decline in Seventeenth-Century Venice (Cambridge, Mass., 1976)Google Scholar. France: Grantham, George, “Scale and Organization in French Farming, 1840–1880,” in Parker, W. N. and Jones, E. L., eds., European Peasants and Their Markets: Essays in Agrarian Economic History (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar, itself a collection of cliometric work on European agricultural history; Hohenberg, Paul, “Change in Rural France in the Period of Industrialization, 1830–1914,” this Journal, 32 (1972), 219–40Google Scholar. Central Europe: Fremdling, Rainer, “Railroads and German Economic Growth,” this Journal, 37 (1977), 583–604Google Scholar; and works cited in footnote 30 above. The Low Countries: Franklin F. Mendels, “Agriculture and Peasant Industry in Eighteenth-Century Flanders,” in Parker and Jones, eds., as cited above; de Vries, Jan, The Dutch Rural Economy in the Golden Age, 1500–1700 (New Haven, 1974)Google Scholar; Mokyr, Joel, Industrialization in the Low Countries, 1795–1850 (New Haven, 1976)Google Scholar. Scandinavia: recent issues of the Scandinavian Economic History Review. Ireland: Solow, Barbara L., The Land Question and the Irish Economy 1870–1903 (Cambridge, Mass., 1971)Google Scholar; Gráda, Cormac Ó, “Supply Responsiveness in Nineteenth-Century Irish Agriculture,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 28 (1975), 312–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Great Britain: Cambridge University Press will be publishing in 1979 a collaborative New Economic History of England, 1700-Present that summarizes and extends cliometric work on Britain.

38 Peter Temin, as cited above.

39 Roger Ransom and Richard Sutch (Cambridge, 1977).

40 Douglass C. North, “Economic Growth: What Have We Learned from the Past?” (unpubl. MS.), p. 3.