Undergraduate - British Economic History Since 1870

Appropriate for Which Degrees:

  • Optional Finals Course for PPE, E&M
  • Core Finals Course for H&E

Introduction

Rubric

Trends and cycles in national income, factor supplies, and productivity; changes in the structure of output, employment, and capital; management and entrepreneurship; the location of industries, industrial concentration, and the growth of large firms, prices, interest rates, money, and public finance; wages, unemployment, trade unions, and the working of the labour market; the distribution of incomes, poverty, and living standards; foreign trade, tariffs, international capital movements, and sterling; Government economic policy in peace and war.

Content and Structure

The aim of this course is to provide an analysis of the British economy since 1870 from an economist's perspective. Throughout this period the British economy was firmly embedded in a broader international economy and much of the analysis will involve a focus on the international context. Britain began the period as the unquestioned mid-nineteenth century industrial leader but by the mid-twentieth century the country’s position was that of an only moderately successful industrial economy. The course will examine the wide literature on British economic decline that the shift has prompted. The century under study was one of dramatic aggregate economic fluctuations in both levels of unemployment and rates of inflation. Much of the course will examine the macroeconomics of the period. This will involve analysis of the workings of the classical gold standard, the disruption of the prevailing fiscal and monetary arrangements by the First World War, the Great Depression and its aftermath, and the macroeconomic conditions of the Golden Age of the two post-Second World War decades.

Course Objectives

The objectives of this course are:

  1. to provide an introduction to the evolution of the British economy in its international context;
  2. to provide understanding of how economic principles acquired in core Macro and Micro economics courses relate to real economic issues and how they can be used to analyze important real economic problems and developments;
  3. to provide insight into policy options and debates with emphasis on the role of historical experience as an influence on perceptions of policy options.

Further Information

Further information is only available for Intranet and Privileged Users

Last edited: 15 05 2012