Cliometrics

Cliometrics is a method of analyzing history through the application of quantitative methods. Cliometrics uses economic theory and econometrics to gain insight into the past with modeling and statistics. The data used in the analysis includes large pools of macro level data regarding population and behavior trends such as census data. Cliometrics was developed around 1960, and the Cliometric Society was founded in 1983. In 1993, Douglass North and Robert Fogel won the Nobel Prize in Economics for their pioneering work in cliometrics.

Cliometrics is also called econometric history and new economic history.

Cliometrics is an area of economic study that attempts to use historical data to model economic principles. Two academic journals that deal with cliometrics are the Economic History Review, Cliometrica and Explorations in Economic History. Examples of article topics include nineteenth century labor productivity in the United States and United Kingdom, credit rationing and crowding out during the Industrial Revolution, and the relationship between population and real wages in Italian history.