RIDGE Call for papers: Economic History, Energy and Natural Resources

The Research Institute for Development, Growth and Economics (RIDGE) is pleased to announce a call for papers for the Workshop on Economic History, Energy and Natural Resources to be held in Montevideo, Uruguay, on 26-27 May 2017. The deadline for submission is March 31, 2017 (12 AM ET).

RIDGE invites to send papers to this economic history workshop on all subjects of economic history provided they are particularly concerned with developing regions.

The workshop will be organized in two different sessions: the first one will be open to different topics of economic history, while the second one will focus on energy and natural resources in the economic history of developing regions.

One of the key debates in the field of economic development over the last two decades has been the relationship between the abundance of natural resources and economic development. Some ideas will be discussed: abundant natural resources are non-neutral for economic development; abundance is an endogenous process that responds to technological and institutional conditions, the characteristics of supply and demand, the linkages with other economic sectors, and the incidence of historical conditions; institutional quality is the main factor to deal with abundant natural resources. In this context, energy appears as an indispensable factor to generate wealth and welfare. No human activity is possible without energy use. In addition, to make it accessible and affordable energy sources must be transformed, and this process generates social relations and interaction between societies and their environment.
Diverse sources and forms of energy have been used over time and it has produced historical transitions. The analysis of the specificity of these processes allows us to discuss certain dynamics of economic development and inform us about their sustainability.

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