Synopses & Reviews
This book brings together a group of leading economic historians to examine how institutions, innovation, and industrialization have determined the development of nations. Presented in honor of Joel Mokyr--arguably the preeminent economic historian of his generation--these wide-ranging essays address a host of core economic questions. What are the origins of markets? How do governments shape our economic fortunes? What role has entrepreneurship played in the rise and success of capitalism? Tackling these and other issues, the book looks at coercion and exchange in the markets of twelfth-century China, sovereign debt in the age of Philip II of Spain, the regulation of child labor in nineteenth-century Europe, meat provisioning in pre-Civil War New York, aircraft manufacturing before World War I, and more. The book also features an essay that surveys Mokyr's important contributions to the field of economic history, and an essay by Mokyr himself on the origins of the Industrial Revolution.
In addition to the editors, the contributors are Gergely Baics, Hoyt Bleakley, Fabio Braggion, Joyce Burnette, Louis Cain, Mauricio Drelichman, Narly Dwarkasing, Joseph Ferrie, Noel Johnson, Eric Jones, Mark Koyama, Ralf Meisenzahl, Peter Meyer, Joel Mokyr, Lyndon Moore, Cormac Ó Gráda, Rick Szostak, Carolyn Tuttle, Karine van der Beek, Hans-Joachim Voth, and Simone Wegge.
Review
"These essays demonstrate the breadth of institutionalist economic history, covering the interaction of institutions, culture, markets, and politics in shaping economic behavior and outcomes."--Choice
Synopsis
"These essays are high-level pieces, based on cutting-edge research, and with a coordinated set of themes concerned with the interaction between ideas, innovation, and institutional change. This book is an important contribution to the literature on growth and innovation."--Harold James, author of Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm
Synopsis
"The origins of modern economic growth have been a central preoccupation of economic historians since, well, there has been modern economic growth. As this volume edited by Greif, Kiesling, and Nye makes clear, that preoccupation is very much alive, and scholarship on the subject is alive and well. For readers interested in understanding the state of the art, there is no better place to start."--Barry Eichengreen, University of California, Berkeley
"Institutions, Innovation, and Industrialization provides a set of pioneering and provocative essays inspired by Joel Mokyr's vision of the integration of history and economics. This book will have an enduring impact and at the same time open up new avenues of investigation at the intersection of institutional economics and careful case-based research."--Stephen H. Haber, Stanford University
"These essays are high-level pieces, based on cutting-edge research, and with a coordinated set of themes concerned with the interaction between ideas, innovation, and institutional change. This book is an important contribution to the literature on growth and innovation."--Harold James, Princeton University
About the Author
Avner Greif is the Bowman Family Endowed Professor in Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. Lynne Kiesling is associate professor of instruction in the Department of Economics at Northwestern University. John V. C. Nye holds the Frederic Bastiat Chair in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center and is professor of economics at George Mason University.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1
The Enlightened Economist
Avner Greif, Lynne Kiesling, & John V. C. Nye (Editors)
1Neither Feast nor Famine 7
England before the Industrial Revolution
Cormac Ó'Gráda
2Progress, Useful Knowledge , and the Origins of the Industrial Revolution 33
Joel Mokyr
I Institutions
3Coercion and Exchange 71
How Did Markets Evolve?
Avner Greif
4Meat Consumption in Nineteenth-Century New York 97
Quantity, Distribution, and Quality, or Notes on the "Antebellum Puzzle"
Gergely Baics
5Funding Empire 129
Risk, Diversification, and the Underwriting of Early Modern Sovereign Loans
Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth
6Establishing a New Order 149
The Growth of the State and the Decline of Witch Trials in France
Noel D. Johnson, Mark Koyama, and John V. C. Nye
II Innovation
7Increasing Market Concentration in British Banking, 1885 to 1925 179
Fabio Braggion, Narly R.D. Dwarkasing, and Lyndon Moore
8The Catapult of Riches 201
The Airplane as a Creative Macroinvention
Peter B. Meyer
9England's Eighteenth-Century Demand for High-Quality Workmanship 225
Evidence from Apprenticeship, 1710-1770
Karine van der Beek
10A Growth Agenda for Economic History 245
Rick Szostak
III The Industrial Revolution
11Amidst Poverty and Prejudice 277
Black and Irish Civil War Veterans
Hoyt Bleakley, Louis Cain, and Joseph Ferrie
12How Britain Lost Its Competitive Edge 307
Competence in the Second Industrial Revolution
Ralf R. Meisenzahl
13Regulating Child Labor 337
The European Experience
Carolyn Tuttle and Simone A. Wegge
14Decomposing the Wage Gap 379
Within- and Between-Occupation Gender Wage Gaps at a Nineteenth-Century Textile Firm
Joyce Burnette
15The Context of English Industrialization 397
Eric Jones
Contributors 411
Index 417