The economics of legal history

Research Project

This project endeavours to combine new approaches in economic theory and economic history with legal history. It starts from the premise that there is ample room for a dialogue between legal history and economic theory on the basis that critical junctures in Europe’s transformation towards modern capitalism were first and foremost institutional and legal. New Institutional Economics have taken this as their vantage point for becoming one of the leading macroeconomic theoretical frameworks. Law features prominently in public choice theories as well as in the nascent literature on law and political economy, with both frequently drawing on historical examples and legal history. Conversely, legal history itself has not taken advantage of this opportunity for interdisciplinary dialogue or methodological innovation. My research endeavours to evaluate the diverse approaches in economic theory, both neo-classical and heterodox economics, as a theoretical offer to legal history. In particular, I ask how this interdisciplinary dialogue shapes methodology to address topics such as demographic change and urbanisation in history and their relationship with law and regulatory regimes. This is not to argue that legal history has nothing to offer to the conversation. On the contrary, dissonances between economics and legal history can be used productively; a doctrinal reading of sources is an opportunity to add depth of focus to theories that otherwise operate on a very high level of abstraction.