Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The study of history using economic models and advanced mathematical methods of data processing and analysis.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The use of econometrics to study economic history

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Clio + –metrics.]

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Examples

  • The result of more than thirty five years of the new economic history, or cliometrics, is not only to shed new light on the past as a result of the application of economic theory and quantitative methods to history but to provide social scientists with new insights into and a deeper understanding of the nature of societal and economic change.

    Douglass C. North - Banquet Speech 1994

  • Ms. McCloskey enjoyed a stellar career in economic history before her apostasy, being among the earliest pioneers of cliometrics—the quantitative study of economic history.

    The New Theories of Moral Sentiments Dalibor Rohac 2012

  • In other words, the turn to cliometrics -- quantitative observation of historical trends -- is more or less essential to the history of the longue durée.

    Longue durée Daniel Little 2009

  • In other words, the turn to cliometrics -- quantitative observation of historical trends -- is more or less essential to the history of the longue durée.

    Archive 2009-05-01 Daniel Little 2009

  • Both Fogel and North have been credited with founding the discipline of cliometrics, the application of economic theory to history, a subject traditional economists have largely ignored.

    The Urge To 'Startle People' 2008

  • Meyer wrote on the microeconomics of slave investment, Conrad worked on the demographics, they put the two parts together, made some convincing estimates of just how profitable slavery actually was historians nearly universally assumed it was a money-losing business and in that putting-together created the controversial displine known today as cliometrics.

    Economic Principals David Warsh 1993

  • But Cambridge was also home to a group of scholars who together would create the “new” economic history—or “cliometrics,” as it gradually became known in the newspapers.

    Economic Principals David Warsh 1993

  • Second, attitudes toward age may be measured in census data, by an "age heaping" test, which Professor Stone dismissed as merely a "clever exercise in cliometrics."

    Growing Old: An Exchange Fischer, David Hackett 1977

  • But they overlook the portion of that change that began with John Meyer, a Harvard professor who was present at the creation of the Boston consulting firm of Charles River Associates, served as vice chairman of the Union Pacific Railroad, helped invent “cliometrics” and ran the Bureau for a decade between Arthur F. Burns and Feldstein.

    Economic Principals David Warsh 1993

  • - whether cliometrics, hermeneutics, deconstruction, or symbolic interactionism - when they are also good ideas, carry powerful residual value in their originality and authority.

    orgtheory.net 2009

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  • quantitative methods applied to the study of history, derived from Clio, the muse of history.

    January 30, 2007

  • While at the University of Washington, in Seattle, where he taught for 33 years, Professor North helped found a branch of inquiry called cliometrics, named for the muse of history, Clio, after he and others had concluded that traditional market-oriented economics faltered in measuring some aspects of economic performance quantitatively.
    Robert D. Hershey Jr., Douglass C. North, Maverick Economist and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 95, N.Y. Times (Nov. 24, 2015)

    April 23, 2018