Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.

From Nobel Prize–winning economist Daron Acemoglu, an incisive introduction to economic growth Introduction to Modern Economic Growth is a groundbreaking text from one of today's leading economists. Daron Acemoglu gives graduate students not only the tools to analyze growth and related macroeconomic problems, but also the broad perspective needed to apply those tools to the big-picture questions of growth and divergence. And he introduces the economic and mathematical foundations of modern growth theory and macroeconomics in a rigorous but easy to follow manner. After covering the necessary background on dynamic general equilibrium and dynamic optimization, the book presents the basic workhorse models of growth and takes students to the frontier areas of growth theory, including models of human capital, endogenous technological change, technology transfer, international trade, economic development, and political economy. The book integrates these theories with data and shows how theoretical approaches can lead to better perspectives on the fundamental causes of economic growth and the wealth of nations. Innovative and authoritative, this book is likely to shape how economic growth is taught and learned for years to come. Introduces all the foundations for understanding economic growth and dynamic macroeconomic analysis Focuses on the big-picture questions of economic growth Provides mathematical foundations Presents dynamic general equilibrium Covers models such as basic Solow, neoclassical growth, and overlapping generations, as well as models of endogenous technology and international linkages Addresses frontier research areas such as international linkages, international trade, political economy, and economic development and structural change An accompanying Student Solutions Manual containing the answers to selected exercises is available (978-0-691-14163-3/$24.95). See: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/8970.html For Professors only: To access a complete solutions manual online, email us at: [email protected]

The aim of The Handbook of Modern Economic History will be to introduce readers to the key approaches and findings of economic historians who study the modern world. Modern economic history blends two approaches ' Cliometrics (which focuses on measuring economic variables and explicitly testing theories about the historical performance and development of the economy, as exemplified by the approach of Robert Fogel) and the New Institutional Economics (which focuses on how social, cultural, legal and organizational norms and rules shape ...

This is a collection of essays by Simon Kuznets, winner of the 1971 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, published posthumously. It represents the primary concerns of his research at a late phase of his career, as well as themes from his earlier work. The first four chapters deal with 'modern economic growth'. Chapters five to seven introduce the main theme of the remainder of the volume: interrelations between demographic change and income inequality. Chapters eight to ten draw on a wider set of data to make comparisons of income inequality among societies at widely different levels of development. Chapter eleven returns to data for the United States to develop more fully the importance of differing childbearing patterns for income inequality. In the introduction Professor Richard Easterlin discusses the relationship of the essays to the balance of Kuznets's writings. In the afterword Professor Robert Fogel discusses the methodologies favoured by Kuznets.

Modern economies have undergone a dramatic change. There has been a shift from large scale material manufacturing to the design and application of new technology with R&D and human capital. The new information age has introduced significant productivity gains through increasing returns and learning by doing, which has challenged the traditional growth models based on competitive market structures. Institutions outside the traditional markets and the genetic principle of survival of the fittest have dominated the current theory of industry growth. This book coordinates and integrates the two strands of economic growth and development: the endogenous theory of growth and the extra-market models of evolutionary economics dominated by innovation efficiency. It presents this new paradigm in terms of both theory and historical experiences. The book addresses the role of innovations and human capital, the impact of information technology, the role of institutions as mechanisms of evolutionary economies and the experiences of Asian growth miracles, and will be of interest to readers in economics and political science concerned with economic growth and development.

A comprehensive, rigorous, and up-to-date introduction to growth economics that presents all the major growth paradigms and shows how they can be used to analyze the growth process and growth policy design. This comprehensive introduction to economic growth presents the main facts and puzzles about growth, proposes simple methods and models needed to explain these facts, acquaints the reader with the most recent theoretical and empirical developments, and provides tools with which to analyze policy design. The treatment of growth theory is fully accessible to students with a background no more advanced than elementary calculus and probability theory; the reader need not master all the subtleties of dynamic programming and stochastic processes to learn what is essential about such issues as cross-country convergence, the effects of financial development on growth, and the consequences of globalization. The book, which grew out of courses taught by the authors at Harvard and Brown universities, can be used both by advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and as a reference for professional economists in government or international financial organizations. The Economics of Growth first presents the main growth paradigms: the neoclassical model, the AK model, Romer's product variety model, and the Schumpeterian model. The text then builds on the main paradigms to shed light on the dynamic process of growth and development, discussing such topics as club convergence, directed technical change, the transition from Malthusian stagnation to sustained growth, general purpose technologies, and the recent debate over institutions versus human capital as the primary factor in cross-country income differences. Finally, the book focuses on growth policies—analyzing the effects of liberalizing market competition and entry, education policy, trade liberalization, environmental and resource constraints, and stabilization policy—and the methodology of growth policy design. All chapters include literature reviews and problem sets. An appendix covers basic concepts of econometrics.

One of the biggest debates in economic history deals with the Great Divergence. How can we explain that at a certain moment in time (the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) a certain part of the world (the West) escaped from general poverty and became much richer than it had ever been before and than the rest of the world? Many prominent scholars discussed this question and came up with many different answers. This book provides a systematic analysis of the most important of those answers by means of an analysis of possible explanations in terms of natural resources, labour, capital, the division of labour and market exchange, accumulation and innovation, and as potential underlying determining factors institutions and culture. The author juxtaposes the views of economists / social scientists and of global historians and systematically compares Great Britain and China to illustrate his position. He qualifies the importance of natural resources, accumulation and the extension of markets, points at the importance of factor prices and changes in consumption and emphasizes the role of innovation, institutions - in particular an active developmental state - and culture.

Together with Mauritius, Botswana is often categorized as one of two growth miracles in sub-Saharan Africa. Due to its spectacular long-run economic performance and impressive social development, it has been termed both an economic success story and a developmental state. While there is uniqueness in the Botswana experience, several aspects of the country’s opportunities and challenges are of a more general nature. Throughout its history, Botswana has been both blessed and hindered by its natural resource abundance and dependency, which have influenced growth periods, opportunities for economic diversification, strategies for sustainable economic and social development, and the distribution of incomes and opportunities. Through a political economy framework, Hillbom and Bolt provide an updated understanding of an African success story, covering the period from the mid-19th century, when the Tswana groups settled, to the present day. Understanding the interaction over time between geography and factor endowments on the one hand, and the development of economic and political institutions on the other, offers principle lessons from Botswana’s experience to other natural resource rich developing countries.