Author: Vicky Fouka

A portion of this blog is consistently devoted to “What can we learn?” type of posts, discussing research that uses history to understand timeless political, economic and social questions – from the effects of immigration, to those of small government and lessons for the spread of pandemics. Besides the concrete historical insights that such research … Continue reading Explaining Assimilation – And Thoughts on Theory and Empirics in Historical Political Economy

By Vicky Fouka, Elias Dinas, and Alain Schläpfer In 2014, the Anti-Defamation League commissioned a survey to measure anti-Semitism in 100 countries around the globe. One interesting result were the observed differences between three neighboring countries: Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. In the first two, 32 and 38% of respondents, respectively, were found to harbor anti-Semitic … Continue reading Victimhood Recognition

In his 2017 Presidential address to the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Robert Shiller drew attention to the importance of narratives in driving movements in the macroeconomy. He defined a narrative as a “simple story or easily expressed explanation of events” which need not be entirely true, but rather could constitute a mix … Continue reading Stories people tell

Vengeance, retribution meted out by an individual or social group against someone who has harmed them, has long fascinated social scientists. From blood feuds in the Balkan mountains to honor killings in the US South to rido in the Philippines, ethnographers have thoroughly studied these extreme forms of retaliation and the environments in which they … Continue reading Revenge

By Vicky Fouka and Elias Dinas Thessaloniki, or Salonica, is a Greek seaport in the Northern Aegean. Nowadays second in population to the capital of Athens, it has historically been one of the largest and most vibrant cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, and a key trading center of the Ottoman Empire. For centuries, Muslims, Orthodox … Continue reading Moshe, Moiz, Moisis: Survival strategies of ethnoreligious minorities

Growing up in Greece and having a love for history, I more than once considered pursuing classical studies. After my undergraduate degree, I even enrolled for one semester in the department of History and Archaeology of the University of Athens. But attracted by the breadth and the claims to generalizability of social science studies, I … Continue reading How Social Science History Changes Our View of the Ancient World: A Conversation with Josiah Ober

The study of historical persistence occupies a prominent place in the HPE literature. Generally, persistence studies examine the effect of a past societal feature – an institution, a type of endowment, a cultural norm – or historical event – such as past conflict or migration – on outcomes today. Several posts of Broadstreet editors have … Continue reading Time-varying persistence

In recent years, we have witnessed several shifts in social norms and publicly expressed attitudes. In 2018, public opinion on Black Lives Matter changed from mostly skeptical, to mostly supportive. This tendency continued until May 2020, when the murder of George Floyd massively boosted the movement’s popularity, driving changes in attitudes towards the police, and … Continue reading Social change

The Great Migration reached its peak in the years between 1940 and 1970, when decadal outmigration rates from the US South among Blacks surpassed 10%. During the same period, the long-standing struggle of African Americans to end racial discrimination was consolidated into a massive social movement. The civil rights movement grew in intensity during the … Continue reading The Great Northward Migration and Social Transformation, Part II

Sometime during the mid-1910s, African Americans, until then almost exclusively concentrated in the Southern United States, began a mass exodus. Pushed out by poverty, oppressive Jim Crow laws, violence and disenfranchisement, Southern Blacks sought a better life in growing cities of the Northeast and Midwest. There, the booming war industry was in need of labor, … Continue reading The Great Northward Migration and Social Transformation, Part I