​Welcome to Queen's University Centre for Economic History

Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH) is an interdisciplinary research centre based at Queen's University Belfast. It brings together faculty and graduate students working on the economic study of the past from across the university and elsewhere.
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News

CfP: Doctoral Workshop 2020
Historical Perspectives on Finance and Corporate Governance. For more details, follow this link.
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QUCEH Seminar Schedule
​QUCEH hosts a regular seminar in economic history and historical economics. For more details, see the our 2019-2020 schedule.
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History Now
​History Now is a history talk show presented by Barry Sheppard and produced by local Belfast television station Northern Visions Television. In each episode, Barry brings together a group of academic or professional historians to discuss a topic in Irish history. QUCEH members have featured in a number of episodes.
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The Long Run Initiative
​The Long Run Initiative is a not-for-profit forum co-run by members of QUCEH. The Initiative is founded on three precepts: (1) to demonstrate the practical value of historical expertise to contemporary decision makers; (2) to create dialogue between academics, businesses and government; and (3) to provide an independent and international perspective on the challenges facing business and society. Find out more here.
An Economist's Guide to Economic History
Matthias Blum and Chris Colvin's new edited volume is available for sale. The book aims to introduce economic history to economists. It showcases cutting-edge research and pedagogy from across our field. More details about the book are available here. And read Chris's op-ed about the project here.
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Research News

  • Alan Fernihough, and Cormac Ó Gráda's new QUCEH working paper uses data from the 1911 Irish population census to show that return-migrants to Ireland represented a brain gain.
  • A new QUCEH working paper by Christopher Coyle, Aldo Musacchio and John Turner uses new estimates of the size of the UK’s capital market to examine financial development and investor protection laws in Britain c.1900 and re-test the law and finance hypothesis. 
  • Matthias Blum and Eoin McLaughlin's new QUCEH working paper on living standards during the Industrial revolution makes use of anthropometric data on university students.
  • Chris Colvin and Philip Fliers have a new QUCEH working paper which explores the (mis-)management of monetary policy in the Netherlands during the 1920s and 1930s.
  • Liam Kennedy's new new QUCEH working paper, entitled 'Afterlives: Testimonies of Irish Catholic Mothers on Infant Death and the Fate of the Unbaptised', looks to understand why the deep tradition of Limbo has disappeared so rapidly from Irish society.
  • Gareth Campbell, Richard Grossman and John D. Turner's new QUCEH working paper presents new monthly capital gains, dividend yield, and total return indices for common equities quoted on British stock exchanges from 1829 to 1929.
  • John Turner et al.'s new article in Review of Financial Studies has been profiled on a Harvard Law School blog. See the article here, and the blog here.
  • A new article by Martin Quinn and co-authors reports on the results of a content analysis of the corporate disclosures of two Irish breweries with significant family ownership stakes (Guinness and Murphy's) from 1950 to 1972.
  • New research by Alan Fernihough and Cormac Ó Gráda re-examines the link between demographic pressure and economic conditions in pre-Famine Ireland using hand-collected highly-disaggregated parish-level data.
More research by QUCEH members
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