All the Money in the World or how the history, economics, politics and bisness has shaped our world 2400-EN3SL311A

The Bachelor's seminar entitled "All the money in the world, or how history, economics, politics and business have shaped and shape our world" is designed to help students explore economic issues related to the present and the economic past on their own.

Participants of the seminar will be able to choose the topic of their bachelor's thesis from among several thematic groups. Within each theme, there are also more specific topics that can be addressed, although the facilitator is open to choosing another topic as long as he or she presents his or her own proposal, which will fit within the general framework of the seminar and is feasible.

The bachelor's thesis should be a literature review on a selected topic, in which an original synthesis or critical analysis of the existing literature on the subject will be made.

In particular, the paper may attempt to answer the question whether the research of economists and economic historians devoted to a given phenomenon has brought "something new" to the scientific literature – whether economics explains / understands a given phenomenon better than it was in the period when it was dealt with only by other social sciences.

A bachelor's thesis can be an introduction to a master's thesis, in which the same issue will be examined in an empirical way.

Suggested topics:

1. Institutions, power and long-term development

Basis: Acemoglu i Robinson, Jared Rubin i Mark Koyama.

1.1 The Political Economy of State Capacities: A Historical-Institutional Analysis of Contemporary Fiscal Crises
1.2 Religious Institutions and Economic Inequality: Continuity from the Early Modern to the Twenty-First Century
1.3 From Empire to Autocracy: Historical Determinants of Modern Autocracies: From Imperial Institutions to Authoritarian Resilience
1.4 The Evolution of Legal Institutions and Its Impact on Entrepreneurship in Postcolonial States
1.5 Extractive Institutions in the Digital Age: Lessons from colonial economies

2. Geography, Technology, and Economic Divergence
Basis: Jared Diamond, Ian Morris i Niall Ferguson.
2.1 Geography and Innovation Ecosystems: The Historical Constraints of Modern Technology Clusters (e.g., Silicon Valley, Shenzhen)
2.2 The Role of Natural Resources in Long-Term Growth: From Agrarian Societies to the Green Economy
2.3 Revising Geographic Determinism: How Historical Disease Environments Affect Modern Health and Productivity in Africa and South Asia
2.4 Ports, Empires, and Path Dependency: The Legacy of Maritime Trade in Today's Global Economy
3. Globalization, trade and economic shocks
Basis: Ronald Findlay, Kevin O'Rourke'a i James Robinson.
3.1 Globalization Then and Now: A Comparative Analysis of Trade Integration in the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries
3.2 The Long Shadow of the Atlantic Slave Trade on African Economic Structures Today
3.3 Supply Chains and Sovereignty: Historical Lessons for the Twenty-First Century from Pre-World War I Trade Networks
3.4 Trump and Others. Economic Nationalism in Historical Perspective: Reactions to Globalization in the Interwar World and after 2008
4. Demography, inequality and human capital
Basis: Oded Galor, Gregory Clark.
4.1 The Great Demographic Transition and the Future of Work: Lessons from the Agricultural and Industrial Revolution
4.2 Intergenerational Mobility in History: From Victorian England to America and Europe in the 21st Century
4.3 Demographic pressures and innovation: testing a unified theory of growth in the 21st century (e.g., automation, migration, education)
4.4 Educational expansion and inequality: a long-term perspective for a human capital revolution
5. Cultural Economy and Belief Systems
Basis: Jared Rubin, Mark Koyama i Ian Morris.
5.1 The Economic Legacy of Religious Conflicts: From the Reformation to the Arab Spring
5.2 Trust, Social Capital, and Development: The Long-Term Economic Impact of Cultural Norms
5.3 The Rise of Secularization and Its Economic Consequences: A Macroeconomic-Historical Study
5.4 Values, Violence, and Economic Outcomes: Why Some Societies Prosper and Others Fail.
6. Crisis, collapse and resilience
Basis: Morris, Ferguson i Diamond.
6.1 Economic Collapse and Civilizational Collapse: Are Modern Economies More Resilient?
6.2 Pandemics in Macrohistory: Economic Lessons from the Black Death to COVID-19
6.3 Financial Crises in Historical Perspective: Cycles of Expansion and Credit Collapse
6.4 Climate Shocks and Economic Transformation: A Long-Term Perspective from the Little Ice Age to the Present
7. The Historical Political Economy of Capital and Finance
Basis: Barry Eichengreen, Thomas Piketty, Acemoglu & Robinson, Ferguson
7.1 From Gold to Cryptocurrencies: The Historical Evolution of Monetary Confidence and Its Collapse
7.2 Debt Cycles and Political Stability: A Historical Perspective on State Insolvency
7.3 The Long History of Wealth Concentration: The Piketty Hypothesis in a Global Context
7.4 Financial Repression and Capital Controls: Lessons from Policy Experimentation in the Interwar and Post-2008 Periods
7.5 The State, the Market, and the Bank: The Political Origins of Central Banking and the Implications for Modern Monetary Policy
8. Divergence and convergence
Basis: Kenneth Pomeranz, Robert Allen, Findlay & O'Rourke, Gregory Clark
8.1 The Great Divergence in a New Face: What Explains the Persistent Development Gap After Industrialization?
8.2 Agrarian Institutions and Industrial Development: A Comparative Study of East Asia and Central Europe
8.3 Why Some Countries Industrialized First: Factor Prices, Institutions, and Trade in Historical Perspective
8.4 Convergence Clubs and Divergence Traps: Are Emerging Economies, including Poland, Repeating the Patterns of the 19th Century Today?
10. State Formation, Decline, and Complexity
Basis: Peter Turchin, Walter Scheidel, Charles Tilly
10.1 Complex Societies and Economic Decline: Structural-Demographic Theory Meets Modern Unstable States
10.2 Elite Overproduction and Inequality: The Historical Dynamics of Political Instability and Economic Growth
10.3 Reconsidering the Fiscal-Military State: From Eighteenth-Century Europe to the Global War on Terror
10.4 When States Fail: The Long-Term Economic Costs of Institutional Breakdown and Civil Conflict
11. Comparative long-term development paths
Basis: Oded Galor, Avner Greif, Diamond, North & Weingast
11.1 Cultural Sustainability and Economic Development: An In-Depth Analysis Using the Galor-Greif Framework
11.2 Paths Missing: Counterfactual Economic Histories of China, the Islamic World, and Latin America
11.3 Institutions Against Markets: Early State Formation and Contemporary Economic Divergence
11.4 Colonial Legacy in Institutional Quality: Durability and Change in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia
12. Environmental constraints and economic adaptation
Basis: Diamond, Morris, McNeill, Pomeranz
12.1 Ecological Limits to Growth: A Macrohistorical View from the Neolithic to the Anthropocene
12.2 Energy Regimes and Economic Organization: From Biomass to Artificial Intelligence
12.3 Decline and Adaptation: Historical Case Studies of Environmental Stress and Institutional Response
12.4 Climate Risk and Economic Resilience: Comparative Lessons from the Little Ice Age and the 21st Century
13. Religion, ideology and economic norms
Basis: Jared Rubin, Mark Koyama, Timur Kuran, Joel Mokyr
13.1 Do beliefs matter for development? Historical Changes in Religious Authority and Economic Innovations
13.2 Protestant Ethics Reimagined: Does Culture Explain the Economic Effects in the Modern World?
13.3 Legal Pluralism and Economic Effects: The Historical Roots of Modern Informality
13.4 The Economics of Religious Tolerance and Persecution: A Global or European Perspective