Professor Mary S. Morgan SAR 609

This course is available on the MA in Modern History, MRes/PhD in Accounting (AOI) (Accounting, Organisations and Institutions Track), MSc in Economic History, MSc in Economic History (Research), MSc in Economics and Philosophy, MSc in Financial History, MSc in Global Economic History (Erasmus Mundus), MSc in International and World History (LSE & Columbia), MSc in Philosophy of the Social Sciences and MSc in Political Economy of Late Development. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course has a limited number of places (it is controlled access).  In previous years we have been able to provide places for all students that apply, but that may not continue to be the case.

The course aim is to understand how economics has been used to change the world.  It brings together the long tradition of analysis of economics as a policy science with more recent ideas about the performativity of economics. It draws on the literatures of economic history, history of economics, political economy and sociology of accounting and finance to explore the aims and methods used by economists to influence, shape and direct the economy. The focus of study will be on particular episodes from 20th century history in which economics features as a technical art that translates ideas through policy into action (e.g. the transition from colonial to  independent economies; the Soviet and Cuban revolutions; and the reconstruction of depressed and damaged economies).

22 hours of lectures and seminars in the Lent Term.

This course is delivered through a combination of classes, lectures, and, if possible, archival visits, totalling a minimum of 22 hours across Lent Term. 

This course includes an archive visit in Week 6 of Lent Term.

Students will be expected to write two essays or equivalent pieces of written work, and contribute reading notes to shared Moodle resources.

Reading lists will be given out at the beginning of the course. Henry Spiegel's The Growth of Economic Thought (various editions, Duke University Press) provides a general background text to history of economics.  T.M. Porter’s Trust in Numbers (1995, Duke University Press) is an important item on the reading list that can be usefully read ahead of the course.

Take-home assessment (100%) in the ST.