An Economic History of Europe

Materials, data, examples, debates

SUPPORT FOR TEACHERS

(See also the new Updates section)

If you have adopted An Economic History of Europe - Knowledge, Institutions and Growth, 600 to the Present by Karl Gunnar Persson as a textbook, you can request slides (.ppt) of the lectures.
Please send your request directly to: karlgunnar dot persson at econ dot ku dot dk.

As an example of the style and substance of the slides, you can look at the presentation of Lecture 1 (updated version), and Lecture 6.
There are 12 presentations in all (see list below).

Please, note that these presentations are for class-room use only.

Suggestions for improvements are most welcome!

• Lecture 1 (DOWNLOAD .ppt, UPDATED VERSION SEPTEMBER 2010)
  (Introduction and Chap. 1)
  The making of Europe and what economic history can tell you about it. Europe trades, therefore it is.

• Lecture 2
  Europe, from obscurity to economic recovery. Social order, markets and division of labour determines the recovery of Europe after the decline of the Roman empire.

• Lecture 3
  Population, economic growth and resource constraints. Technological progress in agriculture eases the constraints of limited land.

• Lecture 4
  The nature and extent of economic growth in the pre-industrial epoch. Learning by doing and economies of scale generates slow total factor productivity growth.

• Lecture 5
  Institutions and growth. Why institutions matter.

• Lecture 6 (NEW - DOWNLOAD .ppt)
  Knowledge, technology transfer and convergence

• Lecture 7
  Money, credit and banking. Despite obvious social gains from money and banking, recurrent financial crises seem to be unavoidable in history.

• Lecture 8
  Trade, tariffs and growth. The complicated relationship between trade, tariffs and growth will be explored.

• Lecture 9
  The era of political economy. From the minimal state to the Welfare State in the 20th century. Market failures explain the rise of the public sector and state intervention in the 20th century.

• Lecture 10 (NEW - DOWNLOAD .ppt)
  International monetary regimes in history. A fixed exchange rate regime became increasingly difficult to maintain in the 20th century because it constrained domestic economic policy.

• Lecture 11
  Inequality among and within nations: past and present. World inequality exploded in the 19th and most of the 20th centuries but that trend is now reversed.

• Lecture 12
  Globalization and its challenge to Europe. There are net gains from globalization, but winners and losers within nations. That is why globalization is contested.

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