Sheilagh Ogilvie on Epidemics, Guilds, and the Persistence of Bad Institutions

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Sheilagh Ogilvie has spent decades examining the institutional structures that shaped European economic history, challenging conventional wisdom about everything from guilds to marriage patterns. In her conversation with Tyler, she reveals how studying pandemic responses from the Black Death to COVID-19 provides a unique lens for understanding deeper truths about institutional effectiveness and social constraints.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style= "font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Tyler and Sheilagh discuss the economic impacts of historical pandemics, the "happy story" of the Black Death and why it doesn't stand up to scrutiny, the history of variolation and how entrepreneurs created vaccination franchises in 18th-century England, why local communities typically managed epidemics better than central authorities, the dastardly nature of medieval guilds, the European marriage pattern and its disputed contributi...