Call for Papers: EHA 2019: ‘Markets and Governments in Economic History’
Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association, in Atlanta, Georgia, September 13-15, 2019
The theme for EHA 2019 is “Markets and Governments in Economic History.” The interactions between markets and governments are central issues in the organization of economies. From the beginning of time, groups of people had to decide whether to let their members trade resources and the fruits of their efforts freely or whether to distribute them in alternative ways in which the group set up rules for use and distribution of resources and output. Governments ranged from contractual states to predatory states based on the extent to which the participants negotiated the rules or a subset imposed their rules on others. As societies grew larger, the debates about capitalism, socialism, communism, manorialism, and other “isms” centered on the nexus between markets and governments. Within the last 250 years more governments have loosened the reins and given people more economic freedom to produce and trade more freely in markets. Even in those countries the interactions between markets and governments have been fluid as the interest groups in society have worked through the political process to provide more social insurance to protect against risk, established regulations, adjusted defense spending, solve new problems, or establish new rules that favor their position. The theme offers scholars a broad range of options for proposals. Papers on markets alone, governments alone, or other topics are also welcome.
The Program Committee, consisting of Taylor Jaworski (University of Colorado) (chair), together with Kenneth Snowden (University of North Carolina, Greensboro), Steve Nafziger (Williams University), and Doug Irwin (Dartmouth University), welcomes submissions on all subjects in economic history, though some preference will be given to papers that fit the theme of the conference. Papers should be submitted individually, but authors may suggest to the Committee that three particular papers fit well together in a panel. Papers should in all cases be works in progress rather than accepted or published work. Submitters should let the program committee know at the time of application if the paper they are proposing has already been submitted for publication. Individuals who presented or co-authored a paper presented at the 2018 meeting are not eligible for inclusion in the 2019 program. Paper proposals should include a 3-5 page proposal and a 150 –word abstract suitable for publication in the Journal of Economic History. Please note that at least one of the authors needs to be a member of EHA. The submission system is now closed and no further proposals will be accepted at this stage.
Graduate students are encouraged to attend the meeting. The association offers subsidies for travel, hotel, registration, and meals, including a special graduate student dinner. A poster session welcomes work from dissertations in progress. Applications for the poster session are due no later than May 21, 2019 online on the meetings website. The poster submission system is CLOSED. The dissertation session, convened by Richard Hornbeck (University of Chicago) and Debin Ma (London School of Economics) will honor six dissertations completed during the 2018-2019 academic year. The submission deadline is June 1, 2019. The Allan Nevins and Alexander Gerschenkron prizes will be awarded to the best dissertations on North American and non-North American topics respectively. Dissertations must be submitted as a single PDF file. Files of less than 5 MB in size may be sent directly to the conveners as an email attachment. To submit a file over 5 MB, please supply a download link in an email message. The Nevins prize submissions should be sent to: Richard.Hornbeck@chicagobooth.edu and the Gerschenkron prize submissions to: d.ma1@lse.ac.uk.. All submissions will be acknowledged by return email.