Pim de Zwart studied (economic) history at Utrecht University, the University of Wisconsin - Madison, and the London School of Economics. He graduated from Utrecht in August 2010 and wrote his master's thesis on real wages in South Africa in the nineteenth century. Currently he is working on a PhD thesis on commodity market integration and the development of living standards in different regions around the Indian Ocean (c. 1600-1800), employing data from the Dutch East India Company archives..