Category: Agenda

On 14 January, Posthumus-alumnus Amaury de Vicq de Cumptich successfully defended his dissertation ‘Exploring the Dynamics of Small and Local Financial Institutions. The Case of the Netherlands, c.1860-1940. Small and medium-sized enterprises’ at Utrecht University. The N.W. Posthumus Institute congratulates Amaury with this achievement.

Amaury’s research deals with the developments of the Dutch financial system from the mid-19th to the beginning of the 20th century. Unlike previous research, this study focuses primarily on the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) continue to be one of the drivers of economic growth, accounting for 60% to 70% of employment and 55% of GDP in more developed economies. It is therefore essential to provide SMEs with better access to business finance and thus enable them to realize their full potential. This dissertation studies how financial institutions met this capital need in the past and what lessons can be learned for the present.

Promotors were Professor Oscar Gelderblom and Professor Joost Jonker.

More info

Fondazione Istituto Internazionale di Storia Economica “F. Datini” and the European School for Training in Economic and Social Historical Research (ESTER) will organise their sixth jointly-organized Datini-ESTER Advanced Seminar for economic and social historians on 8-13 May 2022, in Prato (Italy) on the theme of “Economic Innovations”

The organisers

ESTER, established in 1991, is an international postgraduate network incorporating more than 60 European Universities. ESTER organizes research training in the form of both the annual Research Design Course for starting PhD-students and a series of Advanced Seminars on special themes within economic and social history.

“F. Datini” International Institute of Economic History was founded in 1967 by Federigo Melis and Fernand Braudel. The aim of the Institute is the study of pre-industrial economic history (thirteenth-eighteenth centuries) and the creation on the topic of a space for historical culture, making comparison between different methodologies and schools of research easier and supporting young scholars during their formative years.

Theme

The topic of the seminar is closely related to the theme of the congress organized yearly by the “F. Datini” International Institute of Economic History, which in 2022 is devoted to ‘The Knowledge Economy. Innovation, Productivity and Economic Growth’. The 2022 Datini-Ester seminar will deal with Economic Innovations. We particularly welcome papers on technical and institutional innovations and their impact on the economic output. The seminar will not deal directly with the production factors, but with the effects on the productivity and efficiency of the economic system deriving from changes in the mix of the inputs.

More info

The application deadline for the 2022 edition has passed. For info on the seminar in general, you may contact Dr Jaco Zuijderduijn (Lund University).

The 19th World Congress will be held in Paris on July 25-29, 2022. The Congress will address “resources” as one of the main challenges of the contemporary world. The Congress will consider sessions on all the categories of resources, that is natural, material, immaterial and human (work and skill): water, air, energy, food products, raw materials, labour, capital, patents, etc.

The organizing committee welcomes a large set of approaches in economic history including social history, urban and rural history, history or economics of finance, sciences and technologies, gender history, cultural history, etc. – and crossovers with other disciplinary fields, including management studies, demography, geography, environment, anthropology, sociology, socio-psychology etc. It also invites panels about methods in economic history, history of economic thought or economic theory, as well as innovative discussion of new sets of data and archives, or public communication of new (or renewed) results in economic history.

Conference website