【今日开讲|量化历史讲座】谁主历史？谈欧洲君主对国家绩效的影响

【量化历史网上讲座系列】(Quantitative History Webinar Series)由香港大学陈志武教授和马驰骋博士联合发起并举办，旨在介绍前沿量化历史研究成果、促进同仁交流，推广量化方法在历史研究中的应用。本系列讲座由国际量化历史学会、香港大学经济管理学院和亚洲环球研究所全力支持和承办。

History’s Masters: The Effect of European Monarchs on State Performance

主讲人: Nico Voigtländer, Professor of Economics, UCLA Anderson School of Management

时间：2021年11月11日 11:00 - 12:30 （北京时间，星期四）

讲座语言：英文

注册链接及二维码：

https://hku.zoom.com.cn/webinar/register/4016360950310/WN_dzjnpx6qQSmA3Az-VHTtFw

Nico Voigtländer of UCLA Anderson School of Management and his co-author create a novel reign-level dataset for European monarchs, covering all major European states between the 10th and 18th centuries. They first document a strong positive relationship between rulers’ intellectual ability and state-level outcomes. To address endogeneity issues, they exploit the facts that i) rulers were appointed according to primogeniture, independent of their ability, and ii) the wide-spread inbreeding among the ruling dynasties of Europe led over centuries to quasi-random variation in ruler ability. 

They code the degree of blood relationship between the parents of rulers. The ‘coefficient of inbreeding’ is a strong predictor of ruler ability, and the corresponding instrumental variable results imply that ruler ability had a sizeable effect on the performance of states and their borders. Their finding supports the view that ‘leaders made history,’ shaping the European map until its consolidation into nation states.

In this Quantitative History Webinar, Nico Voigtländer will explain how their study shows that rulers mattered only where their power was largely unconstrained. In reigns where parliaments checked the power of monarchs, ruler ability no longer affected their state’s performance. Thus, the strengthening of parliaments in Northern European states (where kin marriage of dynasties was particularly wide-spread) may have shielded them from the detrimental effects of inbreeding.

Nico's co-author: Sebastian Ottinger (UCLA Anderson School of Management)

“量化历史研究”公众号由陈志武（香港大学冯氏基金讲席教授、原耶鲁大学教授）及其团队——林展（中国人民大学）、熊金武（中国政法大学）、何石军（武汉大学）、蒋勤（上海交通大学）、彭雪梅（中山大学）等人负责。向学界和业界朋友，定期推送量化历史研究经典、前沿文献。同时作为“量化历史讲习班”信息交流平台。喜欢我们的朋友请搜寻公众号：QuantitativeHistory，或扫描下面二维码关注。

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