Towards a Comparative History of Household Finance Before and after Industrial Revolution

In the fall of 2023 we host a workshop that asks a very simple empirical question: how did households in the past organize their finances? How did people pay for food, clothing and housing? What did more affluent households do with the money they earned beyond what was needed for primary consumption? And for households living on the edge of subsistence: could they complement financial support from within their social networks with public welfare, private insurance, or more or less costly forms of credit?