Business History

• The Emergence of Civilization and the Pre-industrial World
  - The preconditions for civilization: agriculture and cities.
  - Competing views of pre-industrial growth: Malthus vs. Smith.
  - The demographic transition.
  - Preindustrial manufacturing.
• Institutions, Knowledge, Growth and Convergence
  - Institutions and efficiency.
  - Market performance in history.
  - The evolution of labor markets.
  - Enterprises and entrepreneurs of the First Industrial Revolution.
  - Technology transfer and catch-up.
• Money, Credit, Banking, and International Monetary Regimes
  - The origins of money.
  - The impact of banks on economic growth.
  - Why is an international monetary regime necessary?
• Trade, Tariffs and Growth
  - The comparative advantage argument for free trade.
  - Trade patterns in history.
  - Trade policy and growth.
  - The birth and consolidation of big business.
• State and market in the period between the two world wars
  - The multinational corporation and managerial capitalism.
  - Europe between the two wars: convergence and divergence with the United States.
  - At the origins of the Japanese miracle: entrepreneurship, the State, and business groups.
•  The Era of Political Economy
  - The long farewell to economic orthodoxy.
  - Successes and failures of macroeconomic management in the second half of the twentieth century.
  - Socialist economies.
  - The welfare state.
•  Inequality
  - Why is there inequality?
  - Measuring inequality.
  - Inequality Among and Within Nations.
  - World income distribution.
  - Gender and race.
•  Globalization
  - Globalization and the law of one price.
  - What drives globalization?
  - Globalization backlash!
  - Business and the globalization of today.
•  The Case of Denmark
  - Agriculture and industry.
  - Cooperatives.
  - Accounting history.
•  Sustainability, and Corporate Ethics
  - The lessons of history for the sustainable development debate.
  - Corporate ethics through history.

• Identify, explain, and reflect upon the main topics within business and economic history.
• Explain and reflect upon different explanations for classical, pre-industrial and modern growth, including demography, institutions, knowledge, and technology.
• Explain and reflect upon the economic history of money.
• Describe and identify the main developments in the history of trade.
• Describe the changes in inequality over time, and explain how to measure this.
• Describe and reflect upon the history of globalization and the challenges it presents.
• Describe and reflect upon the evolution of the firm.
• Describe and reflect upon some main developments within Danish business and economic history.

• Apply economic theory as it relates to economic and business history.
• Understand and summarize academic work (for example journal articles) relating to business and economic history.
  
  

• Independently apply models and theories related to economic and business history.
• Identify a need for further development of the models and theories related to economic and business history.

There will be 15 lectures of 3 hours each during which the required reading will be presented. Students are expected to have read the reading material before they come to class.

Schedueled classes:
45 hours distributed as 3 hours per week for 15 weeks.

Workload:
Lectures - 45 hours
Preparation for lectures – 145 hours
Compulsory term papers – 20 hours each, 80 hours in total
Total 270 hours.

This corresponds to an average weekly workload of 13 hours during the semester, including the exam.

New course first offered in Autum 2022 (E22).

However please notics -
NOTE - Students who took "An Introduction to Economic and Business History" (B540000101) cannot take the course. The two courses are considered to be identical.