University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa economist Sumner La Croix has been elected vice president of the Economic History Association (EHA) for 2023–24. EHA is the world’s leading association of economic historians, supports research by graduate students, publishes the Journal of Economic History (JEH) and holds annual conferences presenting cutting-edge research in the field.
“I feel really honored to be elected by fellow economic historians to be an EHA officer,” La Croix said. “My goals are to work closely with President Doug Irwin (Dartmouth College) to ensure that EHA continues to provide research support to young scholars in the field and to highlight the great research being done in economic history. It is wonderful to see the Nobel Prize in Economics be awarded this year to an economic historian, Claudia Goldin of Harvard University.”
La Croix is professor emeritus in UH Mānoa’s Department of Economics in the College of Social Sciences and a senior research fellow with the UH Economic Research Organization. His research focuses on the economic history of Hawaiʻi and Australia, institutional change and property rights in the Asia-Pacific region, and climate change and electric vehicles. He is associate editor of Asia-Pacific Economic History Review and a member of the Executive Committee of the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand.
La Croix served as co-principal investigator (2008–17) for the National Science Foundation grant sponsoring Cliometric Society conferences, and received the 2016 Clio Can Award for Exceptional Service to the field of cliometrics (application of economic theory and quantitative techniques to describe and explain historical events). He served on the Board of Editors of JEH (2009–14, 2016–20), and received the 2018 award for outstanding service to the JEH Editorial Board. From 2011–20, La Croix was an executive editor for the Journal of Asian Economics.
His articles have appeared in leading economics and policy journals, including JEH, Economic History Review, Explorations in Economic History, Labor History, Handbook of Cliometrics, Historical Statistics of the United States, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Economic Record, Transportation Policy, Research Policy, Climate Policy and International Economic Review.
La Croix’s article (co-author Edwyna Harris), “Australia’s Forgotten Copper Mining Boom: Understanding How South Australia Avoided Dutch Disease, 1843–1850,” received the 2021 award for best paper published in Economic Record. His book, Hawaiʻi: Eight Hundred Years of Political and Economic Change, was published by University of Chicago Press in 2019.
