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Aspects of Quantitative Research in Economic History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Lance E. Davis ,
Jonathan R. T. Hughes  and
Stanley Reiter
Lance E. Davis
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Jonathan R. T. Hughes
Affiliation:
Purdue University
Stanley Reiter
Affiliation:
Purdue University
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Extract

If we are successfully to relate our work with the main body of Economic History, we must be able to show the fundamental relationship between quantitative analysis and more conventional methods of economic historians. The historian reconstructs events of the past, and with them attempts to understand the institutions and modes of behavior associated with those events. He seeks to construct a consistent story revealing the fundamental nature and meaning to us of the past, thus creating insight into the past and understanding of it—something considerably beyond a mere account of what probably happened. However, this story must be based upon, and be consistent with, the reconstructed events of the past, “what probably happened.”

Type
Temporal Aspects of Economic Change
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , December 1960 , pp. 539 - 547
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1960

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References

1 See, for example, D'Avenant, Charles, An Essay Upon the Probable Method of Making a People Gainers in the Balance of Trade (London, 1699);Google ScholarGraunt, John, Natural and Political Observations Mentioned in a Following Index and Made Upon the Bills of Mortality (London, 1662);Google ScholarKing, Gregory, Natural and Political Observations and Conclusions Upon the State and Condition of England 1696 (London, 1810);Google ScholarHull, Charles H., ed., The Economic Writings of Sir William Petty (Cambridge, Mass., 1899)Google Scholar.

2 William Newmarch, “An Attempt to Ascertain the Magnitude and Fluctuations of the Amount of Bills of Exchange (Inland and Foreign) in Circulation at One Time in Great Britain, in England, in Scotland, in Lancashire, and in Cheshire, Respectively, During Each of the Twenty Years 1828–1947, Both Inclusive; and Also Embracing in the Inquiry Bills Drawn Upon Foreign Countries,” Journal of the Statistical Society of London, XIV (1851), 143–92Google Scholar.

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4 See, for example, Kuznets, Simon, National Product Since 1869 (New York: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1946);Google Scholar or Kuznets, Simon, Secular Movements in Production and Prices; Their Nature and Bearing Upon Cyclical Fluctuations (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930)Google Scholar; or “Long-Term Changes in the National Income of the United States Since 1870,” Income and Wealth of the United States Trends and Structure, Series II, pp. 10–246.

5 Matthews, Robert C. O., A Study in Trade Cycle History; Economic Fluctuations in Great Britain, 1833–1842 (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1954);Google ScholarConrad, Alfred H. and Meyer, John R., “The Economics of Slavery in the Ante Bellum South,” Journal of Political Economy, LXVI (April 1958), 95–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Newmarch, “Circulation.”

7 Hughes, Jonathan R. T. and Reiter, Stanley, “The First 1,945 British Steamships,” Journal of the American Statistical Association, LIII (June 1958), 360–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Newmarch, “Circulation,” p. 149.

9 Davis, Lance E., “Sources of Industrial Finance: The American Textile Industry, A Case Study,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, IX (April 1957), 189–203Google Scholar.

10 Davis, Lance E., “Stock Ownership in the Early New England Textile Industry,” The Business History Review, XXXII (Summer 1958), 204–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Hughes and Reiter, “1,945 Steamships.”

12 Davis, Lance E., “The New England Textile Mills and die Capital Markets: A Study of Industrial Borrowing, 1840–1860,” The Journal of Economic History XX (March 1960), 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Davis, Lance E. and Hughes, Jonathan R. T., “A Dollar Sterling Exchange 1803–1895,” Economic History Review (August 1960)Google Scholar.

14 Wallis, W. Allen and Roberts, Harry V., Statistics, A New Approach (Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1956), p. 20Google Scholar.