Paul Bairoch

Paul Bairoch (24 July 1930, Antwerp – 12 February 1999, Geneva) was one of the great post-war economic historians who specialised in global economic history, urban history and historical demography. He published or co-authored more than two dozen books and 120 scholarly articles.

Bairoch gained a bachelor's degree by correspondence, intending to become an engineer but he turned to studying economic history in 1956 at the parisian Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. He obtained his doctorate in 1963 at the Free University of Brussels where he worked from 1965 to 1995. He was economic adviser to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) at Geneva from 1967 to 1969, professor at the Sir George Williams University (Concordia) in Montréal from 1969 to 1971 and on recommendation of Fernand Braudel became director of studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes from 1971 to 1972. In 1972 he was made professor of history at the University of Geneva. He retired in 1995. He was also visiting professor at Harvard and at the Collège de France (1983) and Doctor honoris causa at the ETH Zurich. From 1985, Bairoch directed a number of research projects on the world economy at a Centre for International Economic History in Geneva.

Paul Bairoch sought through quantitative, empirical research of historical trends to question and challenge many beliefs which are nowadays generally accepted in economics (see in particular his work Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes), among which: the idea that free trade historically led to periods of economic growth; that moving away from free trade caused the Great Depression; and that colonial powers in the 19th and early 20th centuries became rich by exploiting the Third World.

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