​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

Book Launch
On Thursday 6 August 2020, Will Quinn and John Turner are launching their new book, Boom and Bust: A Global History of Financial Bubbles Hardcover​. ​
Honorary Appointments
Queen's University Belfast has appointed Rebecca Stuart as Honorary Professor of Practice in Finance, and Matthias Blum as Honorary Senior Lecturer in Economics. Both have strong long-standing connections with QUCEH. These appointments honour these links, and aim to deepen ongoing and future research collaborations.
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Award
Robin Adams has won the 2020 Thirsk-Feinstein PhD Dissertation Prize, awarded to the best doctoral dissertation in economic and/or social history by the Economic History Society. He won the prize for a DPhil thesis defended at the University of Oxford in 2019 entitled 'Shadow of a Taxman: how, and by whom, was the Republican Government financed in the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921)?'.
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COVID Cancellations:
Our Historical Perspectives on Finance and Corporate Governance workshop is now cancelled and will be rescheduled.

​Our economic history seminar series is suspended until further notice.
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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

  • ​A new QUCEH working paper by Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico examines the relationship between COVID-19 mortality and race in Chicago, and draws historical links with redlining and the Spanish flu
  • Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico's new QUCEH working paper on the effect of historical slavery on the African American family structure is now available.
  • Chris Colvin and Eoin McLaughlin have a new QUCEH working paper which estimates the demographic impact of the Spanish flu in Ireland.
  • Rebecca Stuart has a new QUCEH working paper on the ability of the term structure to predict economic activity is empirically in Ireland since 1972.
  • Rowena Gray has two new QUCEH working papers on housing markets using GIS data she has collected for Manhattan in the late-nineteenth century.
  • 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.​
More research by QUCEH members
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