I am a
Professor of Economics at UC-Davis, chair of the
steering committee of the All-UC Group in Economic
History, and a Research Associate of the Center for Poverty
Research at Davis.
My main current research is on the history and nature of
social mobility, investigated using the status information
content of surnames and its rate of change over time. Using such
methods we can estimate rates of social mobility as early
as 1300 for England, and 1700 for Sweden. But I still also
study long run economic growth, the wealth of nations,
with particular focus on the economic history of England
and India.
I
teach undergraduate and graduate World Economic History,
and help organize the economic history seminar. We
have one of the strongest groups of economic historians in
the world here. If you are interested in Economic
History at Davis check the web sites of my colleagues
Peter Lindert, Chris Meissner, Alan Olmstead, and Alan
Taylor.
I grew
up in Scotland, where one of my contemporaries at Holy
Cross High, Hamilton, was Donnie Burns, 14-time World
Professional Latin American Dance Champion. My
grandfathers came from Ireland to work in the coal mines
and steel mills of the Clyde Valley, as part of the great
diaspora of the Irish triggered by Ireland’s failure to
industrialize in the nineteenth century.
My
path from the rain of the West of Scotland to the sunshine
of California was by way of degrees at King’s College,
Cambridge, and Harvard, and faculty positions at Stanford
and Michigan.
My office is 1137 Social Sciences and Humanities
Building. To contact me stop by, call 530-574-7188,
or send an e-mail.
