Chris Colvin

Patently Peculiar: Patents and Innovation in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands

11/04/2025

Abstract: We examine the accessibility and functioning of the patent system in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, a state that existed between 1815 and 1830. The country’s patent law combined an examination process with significant government discretion over a patent’s duration and cost. Using our hand-collected database of all patent applications—granted, withdrawn, and rejected—we […]

Financing Innovation: The Role of Patent Examination

01/09/2025

Abstract: We examine how the design of the patent system shapes firms’ access to finance. We exploit a UK reform that introduced substantive examination into the patent application process, improving the quality of information available to investors about the value of firms’ innovation. Using a newly compiled dataset of officially listed corporations, we find that […]

Mind Your Language: Explaining the Retreat of the Irish Language Frontier

24/07/2024

Abstract: Why do we choose one language over another? Rival views see language frontiers as exogenous, driven by policy, or endogenous, determined by social, cultural and economic forces. We study language loss in nineteenth-century Ireland’s bilingual society using individual-level data from the 1901 census. Our analysis highlights the intergenerational influence of the education received by […]

Financing UK rail infrastructure: how does today compare with the past?

19/03/2024

Summary:In Victorian Britain, hundreds of companies and countless private investors supported railway construction; today, such infrastructure is only financed by the government. Comparing delivery of HS2 and the Great Western Railway suggests that the historical funding model was rather more effective. Cite as: Padraig McKee, Chris Colvin, Financing UK rail infrastructure: how does today compare […]

What can we learn from historical pandemics? A systematic review of the literature

01/12/2023

Abstract: What are the insights from historical pandemics for policymaking today? We carry out a systematic review of the literature on the impact of pandemics that occurred since the Industrial Revolution and prior to Covid-19. Our literature searches were conducted between June 2020 and September 2023, with the final review encompassing 169 research papers selected […]

More talk, less chalk: Communicating economics in the modern classroom

20/06/2023

Abstract: “Communicating Economics” is a first-year undergraduate course, which explores the range of ways in which economics is communicated. Its second purpose is to impart core communication skills to new economists. I set out my approach to teaching this new course, focusing on a sequence of lectures and small-group discussion classes which are all about […]

Demography and age heaping: solving Ireland’s post-famine digit preference puzzle

01/12/2022

Abstract: The quality of age reporting in Ireland worsened in the years after the Great Irish Famine (1845–1852), even as other measures of educational attainment improved. We show how demography partly accounts for this seemingly conflicting pattern. Specifically, we argue that a greater propensity to emigrate typified the youngest segment (23–32- year-olds) used in conventional […]

Economic history and the future of pedagogy in economics

01/08/2022

Abstract: Economic history is integral to the study of economics and economies. Besides providing students with a valuable long-run perspective on the modern world, the field also helps them to better understand the contingency of economic theory. Despite a newfound interest in economic history among economists, teaching and learning in economic history at undergraduate level […]

Scarring and Selection in the Great Irish Famine

31/03/2025

Summary: We study the health impact of the Great Irish Famine by comparing cohorts born during the Famine with those born immediately before and immediately after. We find evidence of selection in the countryside and scarring in the city. Abstract: How do famines shape the health of survivors? We examine the long-term impact of the […]

Death, demography and the denominator: Age-adjusted Influenza-18 mortality in Ireland

29/01/2021

Abstract: Using the Irish experience of the 1918–1919 Spanish flu pandemic (“Influenza-18”), we demonstrate how pandemic mortality statistics can be sensitive to the demographic composition of a country. We build a new spatially disaggregated population database for Ireland’s 32 counties for 1911–1920 with vital statistics on births, ageing, migration and deaths. Our principal contribution is […]

An Economist’s Guide to Economic History

01/12/2018

Blurb: Without economic history, economics runs the risk of being too abstract or parochial, of failing to notice precedents, trends and cycles, of overlooking the long-run and thus misunderstanding ‘how we got here’. Recent financial and economic crises illustrate spectacularly how the economics profession has not learnt from its past. This important and unique book […]

Why are corporations terminated? A century of evidence from the Netherlands

11/08/2025

Abstract: We identify all 196 Dutch exchange-listed corporations that halted their operations and ceased to exist between 1903 and 1996. We then explain these terminations using unique hand-collected accounting and governance data and regression techniques suited to long-run comparative analysis. Although Dutch bankruptcy laws remained unchanged across the twentieth century, patterns of corporate exit shifted […]

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Queen's University Belfast

Research Associate, Director, Outreach Steering Group

Read Full Bio: https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/chris-colvin

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