r/EconomicHistory 28d ago

Discussion Best economic history reads - Summer 2026

22 Upvotes

With the end of August on the horizon, many summer readers might be anxious to sneak in a few more books.

We invite those who have read everything from economic, financial, or business history classics down to the year's new releases to contribute and share the best of what you've read.

See also: Winter 2025, Summer 2025


r/EconomicHistory 11h ago

Blog Joseph de la Vega wrote Confusion de Confusiones in 1688, perhaps the first book published on the topic of the stock market anywhere in the world. The book presents insights into how the Amsterdam stock market worked. (Tontine Coffee-House, August 2026)

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5 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 15h ago

Editorial What Asia’s Industrialization Lessons Can Teach Fragmented States

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3 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 1d ago

Journal Article Review paper: "Innovation and the great divergence" (S Broadberry and R Zhai, August 2026)

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6 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 1d ago

Blog Hamburg merchant houses speculated on the price of commodities like sugar during the French Revolutionary Wars. When prices fell in 1799, a series of merchant houses became insolvent. Cascading bankruptcies reached London merchants and Caribbean planters. (Tontine Coffee-House, August 2026)

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11 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 2d ago

Video Eric Schneider on the role of transportation networks for the spread of plague in England (May 2026)

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6 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 2d ago

Working Paper Between 1889 and 1929, farmers in Kansas who showed signs of being more risk averse were more likely to adopt tractors and farm mechanization more slowly. (R. Levin, D. Vidart, August 2026)

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6 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 3d ago

Discussion Share of global GDP has shifted among major economies and empires from 1820 to 2025

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27 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 3d ago

Journal Article Prison records from Missouri between 1850 and 1931 show that positive economic shocks reduce prison admission rates for all crime categories, and negative shocks increase prison admission rates, with the relationship being larger for negative shocks. (J. Wu, August 2026)

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11 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 3d ago

Journal Article The Brussels Stock Exchange prior to WWI operated under illiquid, low information conditions which distort historical understanding of financial returns (J Case, E Poelmans and G Verdickt, August 2026)

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3 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 3d ago

Blog In 1989, imports supplied less than 20% of U.S. lamp consumption. By 2004, they supplied roughly half. Why did the change happen so quickly?

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1 Upvotes

Across textiles, cutlery, shipbuilding, and a much broader range of industries, American production eroded through successive waves of foreign competition after World War II. Light bulbs followed a strikingly different path.

U.S. factories remained competitive despite high wages, and China accounted for less than 3% of lamp imports as late as 1989.

I wrote this article to examine why the industry resisted foreign competition for so long—and why that resilience suddenly broke down during the transition from incandescent bulbs to CFLs and LEDs. It draws on an FTC history of the electric-lamp industry, MIT industry research, and federal records on lighting-efficiency policy.

Are there other industries that resisted imports for decades and then declined just as quickly?

https://puresource.substack.com/p/china-didnt-kill-american-light-bulbs


r/EconomicHistory 3d ago

Question We live in an era often compared to the "Gilded Age." Is that a fair comparison?

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2 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 4d ago

EH in the News What It Took to Dismantle the Most Powerful Company in the World

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3 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 4d ago

Working Paper THE EFFECT OF LIBERALIZATION ON INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA

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3 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 4d ago

Working Paper When private capital retreats during wars and financial crises, governments often step in with large-scale, heavily subsidized cross-border loans. (NBER, August 2026)

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3 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 5d ago

Working Paper Politicized massacres during the Korean War led to longer term regional disparities as South Korea's economy rebuilt from war (Y Jung, G Lim and S Park, July 2025)

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5 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 5d ago

Journal Article Exceptionally rich and accessible ores from Britain played a fundamental role in the transition from copper to full tin-bronze metallurgy across Europe and the Mediterranean during the second millennium BCE. (R. Williams, et al., May 2025)

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13 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 6d ago

Journal Article Study of bronze figurines made by the Nuraghe culture of Sardinia during the early first millennium BCE show that locals mostly used copper from several Sardinian mines and sometimes imports from the Iberian Peninsula. (D. Berger, et al., September 2025)

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23 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 7d ago

Working Paper During the 20th century, the expansion of co-ed university education in the USA enabled numerous additional marriages among the college educated (R Abramitzky, S Pérez and J Price, August 2026)

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22 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 7d ago

Blog Researchers have used natural language processing techniques to detect textual connections among patents. This method may help identify breakthrough innovations that are distinct from prior patents (American Economic Association, September 2021)

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13 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 7d ago

Discussion "The Making Of The English Working Class" by E.P. Thompson (1963) Review

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5 Upvotes

It's Book Review Monday @ Apoc! Catch our look at E.P. Thompson's seminal study "The Making Of The English Working Class (1963) HERE: https://apocatastasisinstitute.wordpress.com/book-reviews/


r/EconomicHistory 8d ago

Journal Article Tracing the history of West Africa's cowrie imports during 1650-1905, it becomes clear that the growth and decline of cowrie usage mirrored the intensity of the slave trade and featured boom and bust phases (M Cháfer, August 2026)

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6 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 8d ago

Journal Article The Andes adopted wagon transport only in the late 19th century. This delay may be attributed to the fact that the construction of zigzagging routes that permit wagon transport are only cost effective when traffic is high enough (X. Duran, J. Guerra-Espana, August 2026)

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26 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 9d ago

study resources/datasets GDP per capita levels and growth of interwar Poland's regions

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22 Upvotes

r/EconomicHistory 9d ago

Journal Article American progressive reformers argued that red-light districts harmed public health, prompting local governments to criminalize sex work in the 1910s. Infant mortality increased after these measures, potentially from increases in utero syphilis transmission. (G. Goehring, August 2026)

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36 Upvotes