Understanding long-run economic growth: a conference honoring the contributions of Kenneth Sokoloff.

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The NBER, the All-UC Economic History Group, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) jointly sponsored "Understanding Long-Run Economic Growth: A Conference Honoring the Contributions of Kenneth Sokoloff" on November 7 and 8 in Los Angeles. NBER Research Associates Dora L. Costa and Naomi R. Lamoreaux of UCLA Served as co-organizers of this memorial tribute to Sokoloff, who died in May 2007 at the age of 54. He had been a member of the NBER's Program on the Development of the American Economy and a professor of economics at UCLA for decades.

More than 150 scholars attended the conference, with participants coming from five different continents (North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia). In addition to the formal academic program, Douglass C. North, co-winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in economics, gave an after-dinner address that interwove reminiscences about Sokoloff with an impassioned brief for the importance of studying economic history and, in particular, the history of economic institutions. Robert W. Fogel, who shared the Nobel Prize with North, gave a paper at a session immediately preceding the dinner, and the two great scholars enlivened the evening with their ongoing repartee about how economic history should be written.

These papers were presented and discussed:

Stanley L. Engerman University of Rochester and NBER (joint with Kenneth L, Sokoloff), "Once Upon a Time in the Americas: Land and Immigration Policy in the New World"

Discussant: Peter Lindert, University of California, Davis

James A. Robinson, Harvard University and NBER, and Camilo Garcia, MIT, "The Myth of the Frontier"

Discussant: Ronald Rogowski, University of California, Los Angeles

Stephen Haber, Stanford University and NBER, and Victor Menaldo, Stanford University, "Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse"

Discussant: Jeffrey Frieden, Harvard University

Daniel Kaufmann, World Bank, "Corruption and Capture in Economic Development: A Few Reflections and Some Evidence"

Discussant: Daniel Treisman, University of California, Los Angeles

Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, Harvard University and NBER, "Mass Secondary Schooling and the State: The Role of State Compulsion in the High School Movement"

Discussant: David Card, University of California, Berkeley and NBER

Naomi R. Lamoreaux; Kenneth L. Sokoloff; and Dhanoos Sutthiphisal, McGill University and NBER, "The Reorganization of Inventive Activity in the United States in the Early Twentieth Century"

Discussant: Ariel Pakes, Harvard University and NBER

Robert W. Fogel, University of Chicago and NBER, "The Impact of the Asian Miracle on the Theory of Economic Growth"

  1. Zorina Khan, Bowdoin College and NBER, "Premium Inventions: Patents and Prizes as Incentive Mechanisms in Britain and the United States, 1750-1930"

Discussant: Manuel Tratjenberg, Tel Aviv University

Sukkoo Kim, Washington University in St, Louis and NBER, and Sebastian Galiani, Washington University in St. Louis, "The Law of the Primate City in the Americas"

Discussant: Edward Learner, University of California, Los Angeles and NBER

John Majewski, University of California, Santa Barbara, and Daniel Bogart, University of California, Irvine, "Population Densities, Political Structures, and the Early Corporation: The Transportation...

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