The Bank of Italy co-organized hosted the sixth CEPR Economic History Symposium. The event brought together leading scholars in the field. The first two sessions focused on monetary policy and central banking: topics included the hypothetical effects of an extended large-scale asset purchase programme during the Great Depression, and moral hazard in last resort lending. The third session covered inequality in Europe and tax compliance in medieval Paris. The role of human capital in the Industrial Revolution and in Revolutionary France was explored in the fourth session. Capital markets were the focus of the fifth session: an estimate of the aggregate real rate of return (equity, housing, bonds and bills) in the long run, and a paper on the information content of grain prices were discussed. In the sixth session papers were presented on the relationship between economic growth and well-being, on the effects of demographic changes on inflation in Italy, and on how international trade networks determined the choice of exchange rate regimes in the 19th century. The last two sessions - devoted to financial crises and regime changes - included works on the Panic of 1907 in the US, on the relationship between inequality, productivity and financial crises, and on the rationales at the heart of Britain's return to the gold standard after the Napoleonic Wars.
The programme and the papers are available here.
