How new technology reshaped the political equilibrium of the early Iron Age through violence.

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What can we learn about institutional transplantation by analyzing craft guilds in colonial Latin America? We use large language models (LLMs) to investigate colonial guild ordinances, addressing two major bottlenecks in assessing institutions: digitizing qualitative sources efficiently and analyzing them quantitatively. Our newly designed methodology reveals both long-term continuities and striking differences between craft guilds in colonial Mexico and Peru, particularly with regard to human capital and product quality. The LLM-based approach identifies patterns that were previously not discernible using standard methods in economic history, its results are reproducible, and it can easily be extended to other historical settings.

In this keynote lecture, prof. Sheilagh Ogilvie will explain how societies have historically managed epidemics through various social institutions.

Abstract. We study the dynamics of capital accumulation, income inequality, capital concentration, and voting up to 1914. Based on new panel data for Prussian regions, we reevaluate the famous revisio...

We show that state legal capacity contributed to economic development during the Industrial Revolution. The British parliament relied on local magistrates, known as Justices of the Peace (JPs), to enforce property rights, resolve disputes, and administer public services. Areas with greater legal capacity – more JPs – in 1700 experienced greater population growth and structural change over 140 years. More legal capacity also led to more human capital, fiscal capacity, and infrastructure development. Plausibly exogenous variation in the location of JPs supports a causal interpretation of the findings. These results illustrate the importance of street-level legal institutions for economic outcomes.

2 years postdoc with a thematic focus on Migration, Diaspora, Citizenship