Dr Karolina Hutková is a Research Officer working on the Capital and Coercion: How Partnerships between States and Firms Have Produced Economic Growth project directed by Professor Noam Yuchtman and funded by the British Academy. This project focuses on economic partnerships between powerful, coercive (often non-democratic) states and private enterprises in the long-run.

Karolina holds a PhD in History from the University of Warwick and MSc in Political Economy of Late Development from LSE. Prior to this position, she was an LSE Fellow in the Department of Economic History. Her research focuses on the history of globalisation and capitalism and explores the role of political economy in shaping markets and industries in the global context over the long run. Karolina’s published work has looked closely at governance, industrial policies, and the organisation of business in the British Empire.

Her research in Business History and Enterprise & Society has explored microeconomic topics on the theory of firm, transaction costs, agency theory, and entrepreneurial leadership and management through the lens on English East India Company’s venture into Indian silk industry. Karolina’s monograph The English East India Company’s Silk Enterprise in Bengal, 1750-1850: Economy, Empire and Business, focuses on the link between the Bengal and British silk industries created by the English East India Company (EEIC). Overall, her research emphasises that it is necessary to include studies of successful business models into the discussion of the political economy environment and institutions that are conducive to development.

Karolina’s current project Empire of Sweetness: The British Empire and the World Sugar Industry in the Long Nineteenth Century focuses on sugar industry in the first era of industrial capitalism. It analyses Britain as the major world sugar consumer market and explores the success and failure of the British sugar producers vis-à-vis the key competitors among beet and cane sugar-producing economies. The project relates company-level analysis to the global and macro-policies of the British Empire, especially to the political economy, trade policies and business law.

Karolina has designed and taught a variety of courses focusing on global economic development and business in historical contexts. She has lectured on MSc modules such as Business in Historical Context, The Development and Integration of the World Economy in the 19th and 20th Centuries and The Origins of the World Economy: Europe and Asia, 1000-1800. Additionally, together with her colleague Dr Jordan Claridge, she has designed and taught a course at the LSE Summer School called The Wealth (and Poverty) of Nations: Historical Economic Divergence across the Globe. In 2018 Karolina received the LSE Class Teacher Prize for the best teacher in the Economic History Department at LSE.

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