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Access Harkness Hall (WLH) 119 either from Cross Campus or from 100 Wall Street. The conference is free and open to the public. Please register and consult the papers online.

Friday, February 25

1:15pm Opening remarks
NAOMI LAMOREAUX
Economics and History, Yale University

1:30 – 3:00pm Islamic Law and Economic Development
Chair: TIMOTHY GUINNANE
Economics, Yale University

BABER JOHANSEN
Law School and Divinity School, Harvard University
The Legal Personality (dhimma) in Islamic Law: How to Separate Obligations from Goods and Secure Credit for the Insolvent

TIMUR KURAN
Economics and Political Science, Duke University
Economic Modernism in Late British India: Hindu-Muslim Differences

Coffee Break

3:30 – 5:00pm Indigenous and Foreign Economic Institutions in Africa
Chair: STEVEN NAFZIGER
Economics, Williams College

GHISLAiNE LYDON
History, UCLA
Contracting Trust: Legal Institutions and Enforcement Mechanisms in Early-Modern Saharan Trade

NATHAN NUNN
Economics, Harvard University
Christians in Colonial Africa

 

Saturday, February 26

8:40am Coffee and light breakfast

9 – 10:00am Europe and China Compared
Chair: PETER PURDUE, Yale University

JEAN-LAURENT ROSENTHAL
Economics, California Institute of Technology

and

R. BIN WONG
History, UCLA

will present a preview of their new book, Before and Beyond Divergence: The Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe (Harvard University Press, 2011)

Coffee Break

11:am – 12:30pm Ancient Economics
Chair: JOSEPH MANNING
Classics and History, Yale University

ULRIKE MALMENDIER
Economics, University of California, Berkeley
Disentangling the Effects of Legal and Political Development on Economic Growth: An Example from Entrepreneurship in Ancient Rome

NICHOLAS K. RAUH
Classics, Purdue University
Landscape Ecology and the End of Antiquity: the Archaeology of Deforestation in South Central Turkey

Buffet Lunch

1:30 – 3:00pm Medieval Trade
Chair: FRANCESCA TRIVELLATO
History, Yale University

JESSICA GOLDBERG
History, University of Pennsylvania
Making Reputation Work: A New Look at the “Maghribi Merchants” Coalition and the Role of Reputation

QUENTIN VAN DOOSSELAERE
Paul Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, Columbia University
Dynamic of Social Ties in the Medieval Genoese Commenda (1154 – 1400)