Dissertation Research in Economics: Trade and Demography in British India

南亚经济史上一场旷日持久的辩论关乎英国两个世纪统治对经济表现和社会福利的影响。计量一直是一个有争议的问题：工资、价格和农业产量一直被学者们使用和批评。然而，已知对经济活动有重大影响的人口指标在这场辩论中没有得到突出的关注。在其他前工业化社会，我们知道出生率和死亡率随着经济冲击而有系统地变化，所以我们希望更多地了解像英属印度这样的经济体是如何通过这些人口参数发展起来的。特别是，这项建议重新探讨了主要基础设施建设对普通民众福利的影响问题，作为这种方法的例证。该项目将收集和分析从19世纪70年代到20年代的英属印第安人人口普查的人口数据、人口统计数据和殖民统计系列的经济数据。该项目的第一个贡献将包括在区域一级建立一个新的每年出生和死亡的通用人口数据集，对南亚的人口历史提供比目前更多分类的新的描述。第二个贡献是更透彻地了解这一时期人口和经济因素之间的动态相互作用，如死亡率下降的原因和公共卫生支出的效力。最后，这项研究将利用这些数据来检验贸易开放和铁路的到来是否或如何影响人口增长。鉴于贸易理论和马尔萨斯人口学理论共同暗示，从贸易中获得的收益应该反映在更高的生育率和/或更低的死亡率上，这项研究将从理论上探索并实证检验一种机制，该机制可以解释贸易开放可能无法改善人均福利。

An enduring debate in South Asian economic history concerns the consequences of two centuries of British rule on economic performance and social welfare. Measurement has been a contentious issue: wages, prices, and agricultural yields have been used and criticized by scholars. However, population indicators which are known to have a major influence on economic activity have not featured prominently in this debate. In other preindustrial societies, we know that birth and death rates varied systematically with economic shocks, so we expect to learn more about how an economy like the British Indian economy developed through these demographic parameters. In particular, this proposal revisits the question of the impact major infrastructure provision, i.e., of the rollout of railroads on the welfare of ordinary people as an illustration of this method.The project will collect and analyze demographic data from British Indian censuses, vital statistics, and economic data from colonial statistical serials from the 1870s through the 1920s. The first contribution of the project will consist of the construction of a new general-use demographic dataset of annual births and deaths at the district level, providing a new and more disaggregated description of the demographic history of South Asia than currently exists. The second contribution is a more thorough understanding of the dynamic interplay between demography and economic factors in this period, such as the causes of the mortality decline and the efficacy of public health expenditures. Finally, this research will employ these data to examine whether or how opening up to trade and the arrival of the railroads affected population growth. Given that theories of trade and Malthusian demography in conjunction imply that gains from trade should be reflected in higher fertility and/or lower mortality, this research will explore theoretically and test empirically a mechanism that could explain how opening up to trade may fail to improve per-capita welfare.