Economic Growth and Economic Performance Over The Long Run: Frontier Research in Economic and Social History

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When the Queen asked a group of academics "why nobody saw it [the recession] coming?" during a visit to the London School of Economics in November 2008, she echoed the thoughts of many people. Prime Minister Gordon Brown admitted that he failed to see it coming, claiming that the global financial crisis was "completely new territory". Economic historians would argue otherwise, pointing to previous recessions linked to crises in the international financial system. Practitioners and academics alike are looking to the past, to episodes such as the Great Depression and the policy experiments that followed, and to long-run trends to see what can be learned that can inform current policy in the areas of fiscal stimulus, banking reform and monetary policy.The above highlights just one topic for which economic history can be extremely informative and this will be the theme of the first conference to launch our series. The three conferences will address key themes that are relevant to current debates concerning the nature of and optimal response to economic crises, the determinants of inequality, the effect of immigration on society and the nature of economic growth, focussing on the dynamism of cities. These topics lend themselves to participation by researchers from the Bank of England, government departments, various think-tanks and, of course, academia. The conferences will provide an important opportunity for these stakeholders to interact and identify key lessons for current policy and economic theory. These topics also represent the main areas of interest currently among economic historians.The outputs will include: new research collaborations, which will be showcased on a revamped version of our existing website http://www.keynes.dk/FRESH/ through the foundation of a working paper series. We will include a page with a list of FRESH participants and a page for posting advice for junior researchers concerning the job market, conference announcements and publishing. Also, a vodcast of the keynote addresses and a selection of the other presentations to be made available on our website and at a variety of other economic history sites. These will be of interest to both an academic and general audience, given their topical nature.