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Sheilagh Ogilvie

@sheilaghogilvie

Chichele Professor of Economic History, All Souls College, Oxford https://sheilaghogilvie.com/

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02.01.2025
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Latest posts by Sheilagh Ogilvie @sheilaghogilvie

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Looking forward to talking at OCIS next week about the bright and dark side of pandemics and state capacity ‪@oxford-esh.bsky.social‬‬‬ #echist www.oxcis.ac.uk/events/levia...

06.03.2026 15:42 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Looking forward to talking about epidemics and institutions at the IHR next week ‪@oxford-esh.bsky.social @PrincetonUPress #echist

02.03.2026 16:53 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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How epidemic disease offers new perspectives on economic history—and vice versa. Honoured to blog for @camunicampop.bsky.social about my new book “Controlling Contagion”: www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/11... ‪@oxford-esh.bsky.social‬‬‬ @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social @PrincetonUPress

20.11.2025 11:27 👍 33 🔁 13 💬 0 📌 0
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Do the preindustrial roots of gender inequality lie in exogenous forces or also in human institutions? “Dividing the Spoils: Inheritance Institutions and Gender Inequality before Industrialization” @felixschaff.bsky.social @cepr.org ‪@oxford-esh.bsky.social‬‬
cepr.org/publications...

24.10.2025 15:25 👍 7 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
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Wonderful audience and great discussion today at the Italian Economic History Association keynote on “Leviathan’s Health: State Capacity and Pestilence from the Black Death to Covid”. An honour to be invited to this excellent conference! @PrincetonUPress ‪@oxford-esh.bsky.social‬‬

04.10.2025 14:54 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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How did preindustrial work patterns differ between women and men? How do you even measure them? Amazing quantitative data coming out today at the Urbino conference on “Women and Men at Work in Preindustrial Europe” mobilityandhumanities.it/work/

25.09.2025 20:44 👍 13 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
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Looking forward talking about “Leviathan's Health: State Capacity and Pestilence from the Black Death to Covid” at the ASE Conference in Venice on 4 Oct, and learning more about the newest work in Italian economic history ‪@oxford-esh.bsky.social‬ @PrincetonUPress‬ t.co/k5DWafQAbw

20.09.2025 20:30 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Keynote “Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from Plague to Covid” | Radboud University In this keynote lecture, prof. Sheilagh Ogilvie will explain how societies have historically managed epidemics through various social institutions.

Looking forward talking about “Controlling Contagion” at the Radboud Conference next week, and learning more answers to its key question: “How Did We Lift the Burden?” www.ru.nl/en/about-us/... @oxford-esh.bsky.social @timriswick.bsky.social @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social

21.08.2025 17:28 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
DP20556 Transplanting Craft Guilds to Colonial Latin America: A Large Language Model Analysis What can we learn about institutional transplantation by analyzing craft guilds in colonial Latin America? We use large language models (LLMs) to investigate colonial guild ordinances, addressing two major bottlenecks in assessing institutions: digitizing qualitative sources efficiently and analyzing them quantitatively. Our newly designed methodology reveals both long-term continuities and striking differences between craft guilds in colonial Mexico and Peru, particularly with regard to human capital and product quality. The LLM-based approach identifies patterns that were previously not discernible using standard methods in economic history, its results are reproducible, and it can easily be extended to other historical settings.

New CEPR Discussion Paper - DP20556
Transplanting Craft Guilds to Colonial Latin America: A Large Language Model Analysis cepr.org/publications... @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social @oxford-esh.bsky.social #echist‬

21.08.2025 16:58 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, V:I, Part III, on government, externalities and public goods:

26.06.2025 17:25 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Adam Smith: "it would still deserve the most serious attention of government... to prevent a leprosy, or any other loathsome and offensive disease... from spreading itself... though, perhaps, no other publick good might result from such attention, besides the prevention of so great a publick evil"

26.06.2025 17:19 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 1
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Wonderful hosts and amazing audience in Edinburgh yesterday for for Adam Smith Lecture on “Market, State, and Contagion from the Black Death to Covid”. @AdamSmithHouse @PrincetonUPress @OxfordESH @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social #echist press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

26.06.2025 16:57 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
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A pleasure to talk about serfdom and my Leverhulme project yesterday at the Arthur Lewis Lab for Comparative Development. @oxford-esh.bsky.social @arthurlewislab.bsky.social @leverhulme.ac.uk #echist

16.05.2025 16:03 👍 8 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0

Trade privileges didn't exactly benefit the special-interest groups, either. @OxfordESH @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social @PrincetonUPress #echist press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

28.04.2025 20:54 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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What does history tell us about trade barriers to favour domestic interest-groups? On guilds and trade in medieval Europe, check out this BBC series, broadcast again this week. @BBCRadio4 @OxfordESH @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social #echist www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b...

28.04.2025 16:12 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1

Has the black box of "state capacity" ever frustrated you? These guys are prying it open ...

08.04.2025 09:47 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Sheilagh Ogilvie on Epidemics, Guilds, and the Persistence of Bad Institutions (Ep. 237) What 700 years of pandemic responses reveal about institutional effectiveness

Had fun podcasting with Tyler Cowen on “Controlling Contagion”, guilds, and the persistence of bad institutions @PrincetonUPress @OxfordESH @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social
conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/she...

04.04.2025 14:05 👍 14 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0

Wonderful audience today for “Controlling Contagion” at the Oxford Literary Festival @PrincetonUPress @oxford-esh.bsky.social @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social

03.04.2025 19:30 👍 8 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Follow the 1525 German Peasants' War day by day: @germanpeasantswar.bsky.social #earlymodern #skystorians

30.03.2025 21:31 👍 9 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
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Der Freiheitskampf der Bauern - Bauernkrieg 1525 Terra X History - Der Podcast · Episode

Do revolutions break out when peasants are poor? Or when they realize they shouldn’t be? And what role does God play? Still trying to puzzle this out, 5 centuries after the Peasants’ War (podcast in German): open.spotify.com/episode/0ZVe...

30.03.2025 17:15 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, CambridgeCall the midwife! Birth attendance and birth outcomes across history. « Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know ...

How can we raise the Human Development Index? Life expectancy at birth = 1/3 of the HDI. Infant and maternal deaths started to fall around 1650 – but why? Alice Reid's analysis of a complex, 300-year story. @amrcampop.bsky.social @camunicampop.bsky.social
www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/03...

28.03.2025 11:15 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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Sewer access shapes developing world cities. New research shows effects on population density as large as for highways, but little on demographics, from Sean E. McCulloch, Matthew P. Schaelling, Matthew Turner, and Toru Kitagawa https://www.nber.org/papers/w33597

27.03.2025 21:00 👍 12 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
The Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, CambridgeCall the midwife! Birth attendance and birth outcomes across history. « Top of the Campops: 60 things you didn't know ...

Campop blog #42: The quality of care during birth has always affected outcomes for both mothers and infants. But the introduction of midwivery training in 1902 did seem to have an impact - today's blog explains why
@camunicampop.bsky.social
www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2025/03...

27.03.2025 12:55 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
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Departmental Lecturer in Economic and Social History

We are also inviting applications for a 2-year full-time Departmental Lecturer in Economic and Social History at @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social Applications should be submitted online and before noon Wednesday 23 April - details below! #econhist #history

www.history.ox.ac.uk/event/depart...

27.03.2025 11:12 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Job Details

JOB OPPORTUNITY: Associate Professorship in Economic and Social History, Faculty of History and All Souls College, Oxford. Deadline for applications 23 April 2025. @oxford-esh.bsky.social @oxhistoryfaculty.bsky.social my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

26.03.2025 16:05 👍 26 🔁 20 💬 0 📌 2
Sewers and Urbanization in the Developing World We investigate the effects of sewer access on neighborhood characteristics in developing world cities. Because it is more difficult to move sewage uphill than d

Why do sewers matter for the economy? People like them! But not only that: sewers encourage agglomeration economies, making us more productive. Super interesting new working paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

26.03.2025 10:46 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid | Oxford Literary Festival Sheilagh Ogilvie - Controlling Contagion: Epidemics and Institutions from the Black Death to Covid

“Leave fast. Go far away. Come back slowly.” Was “Cito, Longe, Tarde” the only way of controlling contagion? A few answers at the Oxford Literary Festival on 3 April @princetonupress.bsky.social oxfordliteraryfestival.org/literature-e...

19.03.2025 13:00 👍 4 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
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Controlling Contagion How human institutions—markets, states, communities, religions, guilds and families—have helped both to control and to exacerbate epidemics throughout history.

Any advice for someone waking up in 1348 to find the Black Death had arrived? How much did it change by 2020? Some ideas in “Controlling Contagion” - out today in Europe. @princetonupress.bsky.social press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

18.03.2025 19:02 👍 26 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 1

Thank you -- I hope you enjoy it!

04.03.2025 18:24 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Ever wondered what happened behind the harmonious facade of the traditional village community? Were the "commons" really open to the common people? More pathbreaking work in the Campop 60th birthday series.

20.02.2025 11:53 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0