Agenda
PhD defence Posthumus alumnus Alberto Concina
On 29 September 2025, Posthumus alumnus Alberto Concina will defend the thesis ‘Tilting the scale of life: A multidimensional study of living standards between peasant and rural market societies in North-Western Italy, 1650-1800’ [transl.: ‘Herkalibratie van de weegschaal van het leven. Een multidimensionele studie van de levensstandaarden in rurale “peasant” en markteconomieën in Noord-West-Italië, 1650-1800’] at the KU Leuven. Supervisor is Professor Maïka De Keyzer.
Alberto’s research aims to test whether economic growth had a positive influence on prosperity levels in the past. Growth has long been seen as a precondition for high prosperity. However, through the use of GNP figures and real wages, indicators that only record commercial transactions, commercialized companies with economic growth will automatically emerge as more prosperous. By developing a new multidimensional prosperity index, to measure all essential dimensions of prosperity of different types of historical societies, Alberto’s research aims to be the first to perform a systematic comparison of the prosperity levels of two fundamentally different societies on the two sides of the growth spectrum that coexisted in Piedmont during the early modern period. They will be studied from a long-term perspective (1650-1800), to test what kind of society was able to develop and maintain the highest overall levels of prosperity in the long term.
The N.W. Posthumus Institute wishes Alberto a successful defence!
