Publications

Publications:

• 'The Determinants of Child Stunting and Shifts in the Growth Pattern of Children: A Long-Run, Global Review', Journal of Economic Surveys, forthcoming (open access).

• 'Did Smallpox Cause Stillbirths? Maternal Smallpox Infection, Vaccination and Stillbirths in Sweden, 1780-1839', with Sören Edvinsson and Kota Ogasawara, Population Studies, forthcoming (open access).

• ‘The Effect of Nutritional Status on Historical Infectious Disease Morbidity: Evidence from the London Foundling Hospital, 1892-1919’, History of the Family, 28, no. 2 (2023), pp. 198-228 (open access).

• 'Health Shocks, Recovery and the First Thousand Days: The Effect of the Second World War on Height Growth in Japanese Children', with Kota Ogasawara and Tim J. Cole, Population and Development Review, 27, no. 4 (2021), pp. 1075-1105 (open access read-only).

• ‘Infant Feeding and Post-Weaning Health: Evidence from Turn-of-the-Century London’, with Vellore Arthi, Economics and Human Biology, 43 (2021), article number 101065 (open access accepted version).

• 'The Growth Pattern of British Children, 1850-1975', with Pei Gao, Economic History Review, 74, no. 2 (2021), pp. 341-371 (open access).

• 'Collider Bias in Economic History Research', Explorations in Economic History, 78 (2020), article number 101356 (open access accepted version).

• 'Sample-Selection Biases and the Historical Growth Pattern of Children', Social Science History, 44, no. 3 (2020), pp. 417-444 (open access read-only).

• 'Nutrition, Crowding and Disease among Low-income Households in Tokyo in 1930’, with Kota Ogasawara and Ian Gazeley, Australian Economic History Review, 60, no. 1 (2020), pp. 73-104.

  • • Sir Timothy Coghlan Prize winning article

• 'Childlessness, Celibacy and Net Fertility in Pre-Industrial England: The Middle-class Evolutionary Advantage', with David de la Croix and Jacob Weisdorf, Journal of Economic Growth, 24, no. 3 (2019), pp. 223-256 (open access read-only).

  • • Previously circulated as '“Decessit sine prole”: Childlessness, Celibacy, and Survival of the Richest’

• 'Disease and Child Growth in Industrialising Japan: Critical Windows and the Growth Pattern, 1917-1939', with Kota Ogasawara, Explorations in Economic History, 69, no. 1 (2018), pp. 64-80 (open access).

• 'Getting Under the Skin: Children's Health Disparities as Embodiment of Social Class', with Michael R. Kramer, Jennifer B. Kane, Claire Margerison-Zilko, Jessica Jones-Smith, Katherine King, Pamela Davis-Kean and Joseph G. Grzywacz, Population Research and Policy Review, 36, no. 5 (2017), pp. 671–697 (open access accepted version).

• 'Fetal Health Stagnation: Have Health Conditions in Utero Improved in the United States and Western and Northern Europe over the past 150 years?', Social Science & Medicine, 179 (2017), pp. 18-26 (open access accepted version).

• 'Children's Growth in an Adaptive Framework: Explaining the Growth Patterns of American Slaves and Other Historical Populations', Economic History Review, 70, no. 1 (2017), pp. 3-29 (open access accepted version).

• 'Health, Gender and the Household: Children's Growth in the Marcella Street Home, Boston, MA and the Ashford School, London, UK', Research in Economic History, 30 (2016), pp. 277-361 (open access accepted version).

  • • Technical note on applying the WHO growth standard/reference to historical data available here.

• 'Optimal fetal growth - a misconception?', with Mark Hanson, Torvid Kiserud, Gerard H.A. Visser and Peter Brocklehurst, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 213, no. 3 (2015), pp. 332-34.

  • • Watch a video of Mark Hanson and I discussing this paper and its implications here.

• 'Una de Cal y Otra de Arena: Building Comparable Real Wages in a Global Perspective', with Robert C. Allen and Tommy E. Murphy, Revista de Historia Económica, 33, no. 1 (2015), pp. 61-75.

• 'Prices and Production: Agricultural Supply Response in Fourteenth Century England', The Economic History Review, 67, no. 1 (2014), pp. 66-91 (open access accepted version).

  • • T. S. Ashton Prize winning article

• 'Inescapable Hunger?: Energy Cost Accounting and the Costs of Digestion, Pregnancy and Lactation', The European Review of Economic History, 17, no. 3 (2013), pp. 340-363.

• 'Real Wages and the Family: Adjusting Real Wages to Changing Demography in Pre-Modern England', Explorations in Economic History, 50, no. 1 (2013), pp. 99-115.

• 'The Colonial Origins of Divergence in the Americas: A Labour Market Approach', with Robert C. Allen and Tommy E. Murphy, The Journal of Economic History, 72, no. 4 (2012), pp. 863-894.

Policy Briefs and Conference Reports:

• ‘Stunting: Past, Present, Future’, Policy Brief and Conference Report (2018).

• ‘Beyond Birth Weight: Measuring Early Life Health Conditions Past, Present and Future’, with Mark Hanson, Conference Report (2015).

Other Publications:

• Book review of Kyle Harper, Plagues upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History, in The Economic History Review, 76, no. 3 (2023), pp. 979-81. (open access read-only).

• Dissertation summary, Journal of Economic History, 75, no. 2 (2015), pp. 558-62. 

• 'Review of periodical literature on continental Europe from 1700 published in 2013', with Matthias Morys, Markus Lampe and Kerstin Enflo, The Economic History Review (2015), pp. E1-E45.

  • • My contribution covered the topics of living standards and demography.

• Book review of Roderick Floud, Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris and Sok Chul Hong, The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700, in Continuity and Change, 28, no. 2 (2013), pp. 318-20.

• 'Evaluating the Effectiveness of Yield-Raising Strategies in Medieval England: An Econometric Approach', University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, no. 90 (2011).

• Book review of Joyce Burnette, Gender, Work and Wages in Industrial Revolution Britain in Technology and Culture, 52 (2011), pp. 195-6.