Historical Natural Experiments: Bridging Economics and Economic History

No 26754, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The analysis of historical natural experiments has profoundly impacted economics research across fields. We trace the development and increasing application of the methodology, both from the perspective of economic historians and from the perspective of economists in other subdisciplines. We argue that the historical natural experiment represents a methodological bridge between economic history and other fields: historians are able to use the cutting edge identification strategies emphasized by applied microeconomists; economists across subfields are able to scour history for useful identifying variation; development and growth economists are able to trace the historical roots of contemporary outcomes. Differences in fields suggest differences in scholars' aims of studying historical natural experiments. We propose a taxonomy of three primary motives that reflect priorities in different fields: historians aim to understand causal processes within specific settings. Economists across fields aim to identify "clean" historical events (in whatever context) to test hypotheses of theoretical interest or estimate causal parameters. And, growth and development economists aim to identify past variation that can be causally linked to contemporary outcomes of interest. We summarize important contributions made by research in each category. Finally, we close with a brief discussion of challenges facing each category of work.

JEL-codes: B00 N00 N01 N10 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-gro, nep-his and nep-hpe
Note: DAE DEV LS POL
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26754.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Historical Natural Experiments: Bridging Economics and Economic History (2020)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26754

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26754

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().