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Why is Economic History Important?

I'm passionate about economic history. I believe that if we want to understand today's world and economy, we need to know the evolution and trajectory of the economy. In addition, our economic past provides us with useful policy lessons for our economic present and future. Finally, economic history has an intrinsic value in and of itself - I'm constantly fascinated about how our ancestors approached economic issues and solved complex economic contracting issues.
 
My passion for economic history is one of the reasons that I founded the Queen's University Centre for Economic History (QUCEH), which has in turn attracted amazing young academics to Queen's University Belfast. At QUCEH, we are continually thinking of ways of demonstrating the usefulness of economic history to wider society. This week two things demonstrated our commitment to this cause. First, QUCEH entered the Twitterverse - please follow us at @QUCEHBelfast. Second, we discovered that my colleague Graham Brownlow's work on DeLorean was cited extensively in a Wall Street Journal article - click here.
 
Image result for delorean graham brownlow
 

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