Jörg Baten (*1965 in Hamburg) is a German economic historian.

Contents 1 Life 2 Work 3 External links 4 References

[edit] Life

Baten received his doctorate from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich with his work about the biological standard of living in South Germany. Since 2001 he holds the chair of economic history at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen. In 2005 he was invited as a visiting professor at Yale University (Dept. Political Science) and was visiting professor at Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona in 2006/07. Since 2006 Baten is Secretary General of the International Economic History Association.

[edit] Work

Baten achieved prominence with his works about the long term development of human capital and living standards. In a global project he and his colleagues studied trends of numerical skills over centuries. ^[1] As an indicator for numeracy, the share of people being able to state their exact age was used, as well as consumption statistics of books. Baten drew the conclusion that early development of education in some countries caused today’s differences between poor and rich, whereas world trade played a rather marginal role. ^[2]

Jointly with Nikola Koepke, Baten studied the history of health and nutrition in Europe since the ancient world ^[3] and in joint work with other junior scholars (for example, Alexander Moradi), he explored other world regions such as Africa, the Middle East and Latin America using methods of anthropometric history. ^[4]

One fundamental achievement was that the health of historical populations depends on agricultural characteristics. A specialisation of animal husbandry, for example, reduces the catastrophal insufficiency of protein and calcium in preindustrial societies.

[edit] External links

• Jörg Baten at the website of Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen.

[edit] References

1. ^ “Quantifying Quantitative Literacy: Age Heaping and the History of Human Capital” with Brian A’Hearn and Dorothee Crayen. Journal of Economic History (Dec 2009, forthcoming).
2. ^ “Book Production and the Onset of Early Modern Growth”, with Jan Luiten van Zanden, Journal of Economic Growth 13-3 (2008), pp. 217-235, also older version: Universidad Pompeu Fabra Economic Working Paper No. 1030. Older version available as CEPR Working Paper No. 7277 (2009).
3. ^ “Agricultural Specialization and Height in Ancient and Medieval Europe”, with Nikola Koepke, Explorations in Economic History 45 (2008), pp. 127-146.
4. ^ "Tall and Shrinking Muslims, Short and Growing Europeans: an Anthropometric History of the Middle East, 1840-2007" with Mojgan Stegl, Explorations in Economic History 46 (2009), pp. 132-148. „The Anthropometric History of Brazil, Lima (Peru), and Argentina during the 19th – 20th Centuries” (with Ines Pelger and Linda Twrdek), Economics and Human Biology (forthcoming 2009). “Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa 1950-80: New Estimates and New Results”, with Alexander Moradi, World Development Volume 33-8 (2005), pp. 1233-1265.

Persondata
NAME	Baten, Jörg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Baten, Joerg
SHORT DESCRIPTION	economic historian
DATE OF BIRTH	Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{", 1965(1965-Expression error: Unrecognised punctuation character "{"-{{{3}}})
PLACE OF BIRTH	Hamburg
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH