There were some excellent presentations at the EHES this year, where some of the worlds leading historians, economists and economic historians gathered to share their thoughts.

The first video is excellent, Bob Allen of Oxford talks about why the Industrial Revolution was (in his opinion) a result of high wages and lower energy costs – which lead to a preference for technical innovation. Deirdre McCloskey of Chicago University offers excellent criticism in the questions at the end. Apologies for the sound quality, Bob had a tendency to move away from the mic and I wasn’t using a remote one.

In the next video Branko Milanovic talks about income distributions in the Mediterranean countries 2,000 years ago, and using very sparse data creates a compelling view of income from that time, what I took from this one was that income inequality has always been alive and well, a Roman Senator made about 500 times the wages of a regular worker (watch the video!).

Then there is a Roundtable discussion featuring the ‘who’s who’ of economic history