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By AVNER GREIF *
Cliometrics emerged 40 years ago to combine economic theory and quantitative analysis for the advancement of history and economics. As an intellectual movement, it aspired to enhance the study of past economies by subjecting them to the rigor of economic theory and quantitative analysis, while utilizing the richness of history to evaluate and stimulate economic theory and to improve our comprehension of long-run economic processes. The contribution of this approach is immeasurable: it has altered and enriched our perceptions regarding numerous issues in economic history while contributing a great deal to economic theory and policy. But there has been a cost: the prevailing economic theory and the limitations of the computing power and statistical techniques available to most practitioners of this approach have also constrained the kind of economic history they were able to write. In a process that began about 15 years ago, however, these constraints have been in the process of being relaxed, presenting both promise and a challenge to cliometrics.
That the constraint implied by computing power and statistical techniques has been relaxed is clear. More powerful computers and more sophisticated applications programs, for example, have enabled more informative quantitative analyses based on larger crosssectional studies, longer time series, or data sets that could not have been assembled or analyzed before. What is less apparent, however, is the extent to which the economic-theory constraint has been relaxed. This has occurred not only because of improved theory, but also because of a paradigm shift with significant implications for cliometrics. What follows is a short elaboration on the constraints imposed by economic theory on cliometrics prior to this shift, the nature of the shift, and its implications for economic history.
The main theoretical framework utilized by cliometricians since the early days of the cliometrics revolution has been neoclassical economics as it was formulated just prior to that revolution. This theoretical framework shifted the focus of economic-history analysis toward historical episodes and topics in which markets were arguably important. Furthermore, much research was aimed at demonstrating the operation of markets in past economies. Comparing papers published in the Journal of Economic History from 1951 to 1960 (just prior to the cliometrics revolution), with those published, for example, from 1971 to...