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If you ask for an explanation of your grade, this will be sent to the examiner January 2. You can expect a reply within two weeks after that date.

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If you appeal against your grade, your appeal will be sent together with any other students who appeal their grade. We send the appeals after the deadlines to appeal have passed.

• If you did not ask for an explanation of your grade the deadline is 3 weeks after the grade was published.
• If you asked for an explanation of your grade the deadline is 3 weeks after you receive your explanation.

Appeals against grades are normally processed within a month after the deadline has passed.

Questions? Contact SV-info.

You can find your grade in Studentweb.

Its very important that you take a look at the following before the take home exam begins:

1) Is your username and password ok for logging into Inspera?

2) On the course website you can find information under "Submit assignments in Inspera". Read about how to submit your home exam in ECON2951.

3) You will submit your exam paper by uploading it in Inspera. Please check out the demo test in Inspera called "Demo - file upload".

4) You can just upload one file, but you can upload/replace it several times. For example if you want to replace it with a new and improved version. The version you upload last before the deadline will be the paper you submit. Your paper is automatically submitted when the deadline expires.    

If you have questions before or dur...

Hi everyone,

For the last seminar we are going to discuss inequality. Please re-read Piketty and Saez paper on inequality ("The evolution of top Incomes", listed under specialized readings) and Milanovic (2016) "Global Inequality", Chapters 1 and 2. We will discuss the following questions:

1) Measuring inequality (repetition)

a) What does the GINI coefficient measure?

b) What does the top income share (used by Piketty and Saez) measure?

c) How would you compare the two measures?

2) Milanovic (see ch. 1 and particularly the "elephant graph" on page 11)

a) What is meant by the global middle class?

b) How yould you explain its reason rise?

3) Kuznets Curve and Kuznets Waves (see ch. 2 in Milanovic)

a) What is the Kuznets curve?

b) What does Milanovic mean by his "Kuznets Waves"?

c) How would you relate the Kuznets curve to the decline in inequa...

Read the slides here (.pdf)

Exercises for this week's seminar:

1) Consider available statistics over public spending from WWII till today - for example from OECD-outlook (the data are most accessible from 1980s): 

i.How would you characterize the long term social spending across countries and  over time?

ii.Which countries expand the most their welfare states? (here is a link to  data from 1980s https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SOCX_AGG)

iii. It seems that the countries that expand their welfare state the most (a) are small open economies, (b) have comprehensive organizations in the labor market and (c) have a low level...

Hi everyone,

In this seminar we'll continue the discussions on social pacts and the role it played in the 1930s:

1. What is a social pact?

2. What was the main content in the social pacts that several North European countries entered into in the 1930s?

3. In the US what was called the 'New Deal' can be considered a social pact. How can we describe it?

4. Why did not all countries enter into social pacts?

5. To what extent can we say that social pacts changed the historical Developments?

6. What is the role of Keynes and Keynsianism for the implementation of social pacts?...

Hi everyone,

Here are the questions for discussion in today's seminar. Apologies for not posting these questions earlier.

Questions related to Debraj Rays's lecture:

a) Explain briefly the role of convergence and divergence in economic history. (Use Allens book)

b) What is meant by history dependence?

c) According to Esther Boserup, modern gender roles and norms depend on traditional agricultural practices, and specifically, shifting cultivation versus the use of the plough. Using the plough requires greater body strength, favors men:

"Societies characterized by plough agriculture, and the resulting gender-based division of labor, developed the belief that the natural place for women is within the home. These cultural beliefs tend to persist even if the economy moves out of agriculture, affecting the participation of women in activities performed outside the home, such as market employment, entrepreneurship,...

Next week's lecture will be on Tuesday, October 31st, at 17:15-19:00 in ES1047 (the seminar room in the 10th floor of the social sciences building)

The topic will be the expansion of the welfare state in Northern Europe and the U.S, as well as selected NoWeDe research at the end.

(Pizza will be served. Costumes optional)

This course has a digital home exam where you will hand in your paper in Inspera. We remind you that you are responsible for familiarizing yourself with how you submit your paper in the Inspera system. You should do this well in advance of the exam.

You can find some information here. If you have questions, please contact SV-info.

The topic for this week's lecture will be "Colonies and Empires"

Allen chapters 5, 6, and 7.

Title: The long shadow of history: divergence and convergence of economic outcomes

Topic: If we believe that human beings the world over are driven by a common set of economic motivations and that there is no fundamental difference in their desires to save and procreate, Debraj Ray asks, then the differences that we do observe may be driven by their particular historical experiences thereafter propagated via economic, social and political influences. He provides examples form recent literature, studying the persistent impact of distant history.

Date and time: 11 October 2017, 12:15-14:00.

The lecture is open for everyone who is interested.

Hello everyone,

See the questions for seminar 4 below. There are no particular recommended readings from the syllabus this week. If you need inspiration for discussing the questions, I would suggest Google (or your preferred search engine). It is in my experience a very efficient tool, but it is especially effective if you use it before the seminar and not during. See you next week!

1. Adam Smith says in Wealth of Nations ''The wear and tear of a slave ..is at the expence of his master; but that of a free servant is at his own expence.'' What does it mean? If true, what implications may the statement have for our understanding of slavery?
2. Slavery and forced labor are said to be the most common form of labor transactions in history. We invite you to speculate:
   1. How would you understand and define forced labor compared to free labor?
   2. What gives slave owners power over the...

The seminar in week 42 is cancelled, and an additional seminar is arranged in week 47

Hi everyone!

As promised, just in time before the weekend, here is the questions we are going to discuss in the seminars next week. Come prepared, read the recommended readings and try to answer the questions yourself before the seminar.

1) Why did the Industrial Revolution happen in England and not in

a) Asia?

b) Spain or Italy?

c) The Netherlands?

2) List some inventions from the textile industry. What was their labor saving potential? Why do you think they were profitable to use (and invent) in England and maybe not elsewhere?

3) Compare some of the ideas of Adam Smith and Karl Marx and discuss their relevance for understanding the Industrial Revolution? Furthermore, did the so-called utopian socialists have anything important to say?

Recommended readings:

Heilbroner: Chapters on Adam Smith, Karl Marx and the Utopian So...

There are no official readings for this seminar. As long as you in advance try to answer the questions for this seminar, any source you may want to use is fine. However, I would recommend you to read the following from the curriculum:

1) Allen: Ch. 1 & 2

2) Milanovic: Ch. 1 & 3

The recommended chapters above is particularly relevant for the first two questions. Questions 3a and 3b are based on the lectures. I suggest using google for help answering this, but I would also highly recommend some background readings from Neal and Cameron:

3) Neal and Cameron: Ch. 4, p.78-81 (on the Black Death) 

4) Neal and Cameron: Ch. 5 (European development 1500-1700)

Remember, reading before the seminar is much more efficient than reading up on this afterwards. Don't waste your own precious time (or mine), prepare as well as you can before the seminar:)

Download here (.pdf)

1. General questions:

What is inequality?

How can you define it?

How do you think it can be measured?

2. Question from the text:

In ''Global Economic History'', p 14, Robert C. Allen writes ''Why has the world become increasingly unequal? Both, fundamentals like geography, institutions, or culture and accidents of history played a role.'' How would you make this statement concrete using examples from Europe in the period 1500-1700? (You are free to use books and other sources) 

3. Particular questions related to the lectures:

a) Black Death:

What are the economic consequences of the black death?

Why did urbanization increase after the black death?

b) Enclosure movement:

Did enclosures of agricultural land lead to a conflict between efficiency and equality?

How can be explain that wages in England were high after the enclosures? Agricultural productivity...

There will be no seminar this week, instead there will be given a seminar next week at the same time. Mark that seminar two is in a different location. See the schedule for updated information.

The lecture today did not go as planned because of a misunderstanding regarding the schedule. On September 6 there is a political science conference that uses the auditorium. Next lecture for the course is September 13.  

A new lecture (for the one that was lost this week) will be scheduled later and a message will be posted when the time and date is set.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Questions? Contact SV-info.

This course is currently fully booked. Despite this, a lot of students  apparently doesn't show up for the lectures.

If you are enrolled in ECON2951 but do not plan to take the exam, please deregister from the course within September 1st (Friday!). You deregister in Studentweb. This will give another student a chance to take the course.

Questions? Please contact SV-info

,

kalle Moene, Autumn 2017  

August 23 Overview -- basic questions and approaches

• Why are some countries so rich and other so poor
• Class divisions and geographical cleavages
• The classical economists - inequality and development

Heilbronner, Ch. 1-4, Allen, Ch. 1-3; Neal  & Cameron, Ch. 6-7

August 30 The first Escapes from the Malthusian trap

• Malthusian dynamics...

Discuss how the classical economists viewed the economies at their own time in the light of the actual conditions.

Literature

1) Heilbroner, Ch. 1-4 (MUST READ)

2) Allen, Ch. 1-3

3) If time: Neal & Cameron, Ch. 6-7

We have decided to give two seminars instead of just one, and so had to divide the group randomly on the two seminars.

Go to your studentweb to see which seminar are enrolled in.

See the schedule here:http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/sv/oekonomi/ECON2951/h17/timeplan

See the website on how to change seminars, SV-info can help you: /english/studies/registrations/semester-registration/seminargroup-sv.html

Also note that we have moved the first week with seminars.

If you have any questions, please contact SV-info.