Title : Clio’s Contributions to Economics and History
Author(s) : Claude Diebolt, Michael Haupert
Abstract : Economic history is a subset of history. Both economists and historians are trying to tell plausible stories about the past, and they succeed or fail by narrative standards to connect one event to another. Cliometrics has transformed the study of economic history from a narrative to a mathematical format. In the process, cliometricians have contributed to the development of both economics and history by combining theory with quantitative methods, constructing and revising databases, and adding the variable of time to traditional economic theories. This has made it possible to question and reassess earlier findings, thus expanding the frontier of our knowledge of the past and its ability to portend the future. The use of history as a crucible to examine economic theory has deepened our knowledge of how, why and when economic growth and development has and will occur.
Key-words : Cliometrics, Economic History, Historical Economics, Econometric History, Economics, History, Epistemology, Methodology.
JEL Classification : N.
