Assignment:
Big Picture Questions
The following are example prompts to help get you thinking about exam. This is NOT an exhaustive list. These are NOT the exam questions. A good exercise is to think about what prompts you would place on the exam if you were the professor and answer those too. Many of them ask the same question in different ways.
- What was the Industrious Revolution?
- Does the evidence support the existence of an Industrious Revolution? Explain.
- What is the Weber Thesis? Does the Weber Thesis receive empirical support? What methodological issues are inherent in attempting to test the Weber Thesis, or any culture-based argument?
- What is instrumental variable analysis? What methodological problems does it attempt to solve? What are the criteria for a valid instrument? What are the potential problems or pitfalls with instrumental variables?
- What was the Enlightenment? How may have the Enlightenment been important for the precocious economic development of Europe?
- Compare and contrast the different "schools of thought" on the important issues regarding the nature of the British Industrial Revolution.
- Was the British Industrial Revolution a discontinuity or part of a slow and continual process of change?
- Compare and contrast the traditional view and the revisionist view of the Industrial Revolution and the role of technological change.
- Compare and contrast the weak pessimistic, strong pessimistic, and optimistic hypotheses in the standard of living debate. According to your reading of the evidence, which hypotheses receives the most support? Back up your claims.
- Discuss various measures economic historians have used to measure living standards during British Industrialization. What are the methodological difficulties with different measures? What are the advantages of different measures?