Institutions, innovation, and economic change

My research agenda combines economics and history to examine how institutions and policy shape economic behaviour and long-run development. It currently falls into four broad areas.

Dutch financial history

My research on the Netherlands has examined the causes and consequences of the financial crisis of the 1920s and the policy choices it shaped during the Depression. Combining corporate finance data with archival evidence, I have studied bank risk-taking behaviour, how socioreligious pillarisation shaped the industrial organisation of banking, the resilience of cooperatively-owned banks, conflicts of interest within universal banks, and the political economy of central bank bailouts. I have also examined how the legacy of the crisis constrained monetary policymaking during the 1930s. More recently, my work has turned to bankruptcies and liquidations among non-financial corporations.

Latest research: Colvin, Christopher L., Abe de Jong, Philip T. Fliers, and Florian Madertoner. “Why Are Corporations Terminated? A Century of Evidence from the Netherlands.” Business History 68, no. 3 (2026): 699–727.

Irish economic history

Much of my current research examines how individuals, households and institutions responded to the profound changes that reshaped nineteenth-century Ireland. Using prison records, I have examined how the Great Famine affected the health of those who survived it, distinguishing lasting physiological damage from changes in the composition of the population. I am currently working on two projects: one examines the declining use of the Irish language through individual-level census data (with Alan Fernihough, Eoin McLaughlin and Philip Neary), while my book project explores Ireland’s uneven economic development within the United Kingdom (with Eoin McLaughlin).

Latest research: Fernihough, Alan, Christopher L. Colvin, Eoin McLaughlin, and Philip R. Neary. “Mind Your Language: Explaining the Retreat of the Irish Language Frontier.” Working Paper, Queen's University Belfast, May 2026.

Patent institutions in historical perspective

I study how patent systems have shaped innovation, technology transfer, and access to finance. My work examines distinct episodes in patent history to reveal how the design and administration of patent institutions affected their economic role. One project studies the highly discretionary patent regime of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1817, focusing on access to patents and technology transfer (with Homer Wagenaar). Another examines the introduction of patent examination in Britain in 1905, asking how it changed the information conveyed by patent grants and affected innovative firms’ access to different sources of external finance (with Stephen Billington and Christopher Coyle).

Latest research: Billington, Stephen D., Christopher L. Colvin, and Christopher Coyle. “Financing Innovation: The Role of Patent Examination.” CAGE Working Paper, University of Warwick, Paper No. 767/2025.

Applied economic history

I am interested in how historical research can inform policy without reducing the past to a collection of simple lessons. My work examines how policymakers already use historical narratives and analogies, how disciplined comparison can distinguish useful precedents from misleading ones (with Johan Fourie), and what we can learn from teaching economic history to government economists (with Andrew Dorman, David Jordan and Duncan Needham). This work also informs my efforts to bring economic history back into the economics curriculum (with Graham Brownlow).

Latest research: Colvin, Christopher L., and Johan Fourie. “Through the Prism of the Past: Principles for Applied Economic History.” Working Paper, Queen's University Belfast, May 2026.