Eleventh Luca d’Agliano Lecture in Development Economics

Eleventh Luca d’Agliano Lecture in Development Economics: “Industrialization and Globalization in the Long Run” by Kevin O’Rourke (Chichele Professor of Economic History, All Souls College, University of Oxford), 6 November 2013, 5 p.m., Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, Palazzo d’Azeglio, Via Principe Amedeo 34, 10123 Turin.

Abstract
Industrialization has been the key to economic growth since the British Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th century. This lecture will describe the gradual spread of modern industry across the globe, and discuss the forces which both helped and hindered the spread. Coal was an important factor determining the location of industry early on, but over time, as transport costs fell, access to local coal deposits became less of a constraint. The lecture will look at the role of trade policy and globalization in fostering or preventing industrialization since 1870, and briefly discuss the way in which this relationship has been transformed in recent years. Developing countries are now gambling on globalization: the lecture will conclude with some historical lessons regarding the challenges that have to be overcome if globalization is to be sustained into the future.

Biography
Kevin Hjortshøj O’Rourke is the Chichele Professor of Economic History at All Souls College, Oxford and the Director of CEPR’s Economic History programme. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is also a Research Associate of the NBER. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1989, and has taught at Columbia, Harvard, University College Dublin, Sciences Po Paris and Trinity College Dublin. He has served as an editor of the European Review of Economic History, as Vice President of the Economic History Association, and as President of the European Historical Economics Society. Kevin’s research lies at the intersection of economic history and international economics, particularly international trade. He has written extensively on the history of globalization, and his Globalization and History (co-authored with Jeffrey G. Williamson) won the 1999 American Association of Publishers/PSP Award for the best scholarly book in economics. Power and Plenty: Trade, War and the World Economy in the Second Millennium, co-authored with Ronald Findlay, was published by Princeton University Press in 2007. He is currently running an ERC-funded project on international trade during the Great Depression.

Programme
Presentation
Article on Il Sole 24 Ore,  Article on La Stampa
Pictures