070190 UE Guided Reading Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte (2022W)

The course aims at familiarising students with the history of the concept of global economy from the 18th to the 20th century. The course will examine economists' writings, official documents, plans of international organizations.
We are now familiar with the idea that we live in a globally interconnected economy, in a world characterised by finite and exclusive resources, an unequal spread of income and wealth, regulations and institutions. We are also accustomed to the fact that many of the phenomena concerning the global economy can be measured and ranked: financial and trade flows, poverty and wealth. In fact, the emergence of alternative models and measures of the global economy is a historical phenomenon with clear repercussions on the world economic history.

The selected readings will shed light on the rise models (in a broad sense that includes economic models as well as general views) and measures to understand the world economy, but also on the institutions created to regulate it, without losing sight of the material infrastructure that makes the interconnections possible. Readings combine therefore economic history and the history of ideas.

The course will be articulated over one semester, in two hours weekly sessions. Except for the first session, sessions will consist of two parts, the first dedicated to the discussion of the readings and the second dedicated to introducing the readings for the following week.