Inaugural Mini-Conference of the UCLA Center for Economic History
Saturday, October 21, 2006
8:30 AM – 5:00 PM
9383 Bunche Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Session 1. A New Look at Constitutions and Commitment, Part A – 9:00 AM
- “Debt Repudiation and Risk Premia: The North-Weingast Thesis Revisited”
James Robinson, Harvard University
Discussant: Andrew Atkeson, UCLA - “Cities, Constitutions, and Sovereign Borrowing in Europe, 1274-1785”
David Stasavage, New York University
Discussant: Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, UCLA and California Institute of Technology
Session 2. A New Look at Constitutions and Commitment, Part B – 10:00 AM
- “Institutional Reforms, Financial Development, and Sovereign Debt: Britain, 1690-1790”
Nathan Sussman and Yishay Yafeh, Hebrew University
Discussant: Marc Weidenmier, Claremont-McKenna College - “Securitization of Sovereign Debt: Corporations as a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism in Britain, 1688-1750”
Stephen Quinn, Texas Christian University
Discussant: Dan Bogart, UCI
Session 3. Sovereign Commitment and Latin American Borrowing, Part A – 11:00 AM
- “Guano, Credible Commitments, and State Finance in Nineteenth-Century Peru”
Catalina Vizcarra, University of Vermont
Discussant: Stephen Haber, Stanford University - “Sovereign Commitment and Financial Underdevelopment in Imperial Brazil”
William Summerhill, UCLA
Discussant: Barry Weingast, Stanford University
Lunch Break – 12:00 PM
Session 4. Sovereign Commitment and Latin American Borrowing, Part B – 1:30 PM
- “Power and Money: Gunboat Diplomacy and the Enforcement of International Debt Contracts.”
Mike Tomz, Stanford University
Discussant: Dan Treisman, UCLA - “The Baring Crisis and the Great Latin American Meltdown of the 1890s”
Kris James Mitchener and Marc D. Weidenmier, Santa Clara University/ Claremont-McKenna
Discussant: Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, UCLA and California Institute of Technology
Session 5. Public Debt and Financial Development in the U.S. – 2:30 PM
- “Dysfunctional or Optimal Institutions?: State Debt Limitations, the Structure of State and Local Governments, and the Finance of American Infrastructure”
John Joseph Wallis and Barry Weingast, University of Maryland/ Stanford University
Discussant: Kenneth Sokoloff, UCLA
For more information please contact William R. Summerhill at summerhill@ucla.edu.
Sponsor(s): Center for Economic History, Economics