The Department of Economics recently welcomed Dr. Casey Petroff, Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester, for a research seminar on the political and economic forces behind the formation of centralized states in medieval Europe.

Dr. Petroff’s research focuses on political economy and economic history. She holds a PhD in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University, an MSc in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a BS in Mathematics and Economics from American University.

In her seminar, Dr. Petroff examined how the gunpowder revolution changed the organization of political power in Europe. Advances in military technology made existing fortifications obsolete and substantially increased the cost of defending territory. Smaller polities often lacked the fiscal capacity to make the necessary investments, creating incentives to form alliances or consolidate into larger centralized states.

Using a new dataset of more than 6,000 European fortifications, the research shows that defensive investments were concentrated in contested areas, closer to borders and farther from sources of raw building materials. The findings support the argument that changes in military technology contributed to the emergence of larger centralized states by creating geographic and fiscal economies of scale.