Week 1
June 23 - 6:00 EST - Introductory Lecture by Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
June 25 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Sean Gailmard
This introductory week frames American history through the lens of political economy, examining how material interests, economic ideas, and institutional structures shaped the founding of the United States. It explores competing interpretations of the Founding era, particularly neo-Whig approaches centered on political principles and neo-Progressive approaches emphasizing economic conflict, while arguing that both perspectives are complementary rather than contradictory. The week also situates the colonies within a broader Atlantic and Continental context, highlighting Native nations as central political and economic actors whose institutions, trade networks, and territorial power shaped colonial development. Finally, it introduces institutional analysis as a tool for understanding long-term economic growth, emphasizing how the Constitution created enduring frameworks that continue to influence debates over markets, federalism, trade, and the role of government in American economic life.
Week 2
June 30 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Fernando Arteaga
July 2 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Alan Taylor
This week examines the economic foundations of colonial British North America by exploring how geography, labor systems, and access to markets produced distinct regional economies across New England, the Middle Colonies, the Chesapeake, and the Lower South. Each region developed different forms of specialization, from maritime commerce and shipbuilding in New England to plantation agriculture in the South, shaped by differences in climate, soil, transportation, and labor availability. Particular attention is given to systems of coerced labor, including African slavery, Native enslavement, and European indentured servitude, as well as the economic interactions between colonists and Native nations through trade, land acquisition, and expansion. The week also emphasizes how these regional economies generated different political interests and institutional structures that would later shape constitutional and economic debates in the United States. By the eve of the Revolution, the colonies had achieved unusually high living standards for free settlers, though this prosperity rested on deeply unequal foundations.
Week 3
July 7 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Fernando Arteaga
July 9 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by TBA
This week examines the economic and fiscal origins of the American Revolution, focusing on how the aftermath of the Seven Years’ War transformed relations between Britain and its colonies. Britain’s victory over France secured dominance in North America but produced a severe fiscal crisis that led Parliament to impose new taxes and trade regulations on the colonies through measures such as the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, Townshend Acts, and Tea Act. These policies generated both economic grievances and constitutional disputes over taxation, representation, and imperial authority. The week explores competing interpretations of revolutionary motivations, balancing ideological explanations centered on liberty and consent with material explanations tied to economic interests. It also analyzes how British mercantilist policies affected different colonial groups, including merchants, farmers, artisans, and planters, whose varied interests shaped both the revolutionary coalition and the later difficulties of building a unified national government.
Week 4
July 14 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Patrick Fitzsimmons
July 16 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Woody Holton
This week examines the economic challenges and disruptions caused by the Revolutionary War, focusing on how the Continental Congress struggled to finance the conflict without taxing authority. To sustain the war effort, Congress relied on state requisitions, foreign loans, and large issues of paper currency, producing severe inflation and the collapse of the Continental dollar, which shaped later American distrust of paper money. The war devastated the colonial economy through British naval blockades, disrupted trade, declining agricultural production, occupation of major cities, and the breakdown of commercial networks tied to loyalist property confiscations and migration. Different regions experienced uneven economic outcomes, with some recovering more quickly than others. The week concludes by analyzing the difficult postwar economy, marked by falling living standards, debt crises, monetary instability, and loss of imperial trade protections, while highlighting early financial reforms such as Robert Morris’s creation of the Bank of North America, which foreshadowed the constitutional and fiscal debates of the 1780s.
Week 5
July 21 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Patrick Fitzsimmons
July 23 - 6:00 EST - Lecture by Jack Rakove
This week examines the “Critical Period” of the 1780s under the Articles of Confederation, focusing on the economic and political crises that led to the creation of the Constitution. The weak central government lacked the power to tax, regulate commerce, enforce treaties, or stabilize the currency, producing interstate trade conflicts, unpaid war debts, monetary instability, and diplomatic weakness against Britain. Events such as Shays’ Rebellion and repeated defaults on foreign obligations convinced many Americans that the confederation system was incapable of maintaining order or economic credibility. The week then analyzes how the Constitution addressed these failures through new institutional powers, including federal authority over taxation and commerce, stronger protections for contracts and markets, and broader flexibility for national action. It also explores competing interpretations of the Founding, balancing ideological explanations centered on republican theory with arguments emphasizing the economic interests of the framers, while emphasizing how the Constitution laid the foundations for a unified continental market economy and enduring federal authority in economic affairs.
Week 6
July 28 - 11:30 EST - Lecture by Jesús Fernández-Villaverde
July 30 - 11:30 EST - Lecture by John Joseph Wallis
This final week examines the competing economic visions that shaped the early American republic, centering on the rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. Hamilton promoted a strong developmental state based on public credit, a national bank, stable currency, manufacturing, and federal support for economic growth, drawing heavily from British financial models. Jefferson, by contrast, defended an agrarian republic built on decentralized government, states’ rights, and suspicion toward banks, manufacturing, and concentrated financial power. The week also explores the practical limits of Jeffersonian economic policy through the failed Embargo of 1807, as well as the crucial role of Chief Justice John Marshall in expanding federal economic authority through landmark decisions such as McCulloch v. Maryland and Gibbons v. Ogden. Finally, it examines how the War of 1812 accelerated industrialization and strengthened support for national economic institutions, tracing how the political and constitutional foundations established during the Founding continued to shape American economic development, sectional conflict, and federal power throughout the nineteenth century.