Week 5. Technological progress

Lecture

Kelly, Morgan, and Cormac O Grada, "Adam Smith, Watch Prices, and the Industrial Revolution," Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. 131 no. 4 (2016), pp. 1727-52.

Crafts, Nicholas, "Macroinventions, economic growth, and 'industrial revolution' in Britain and France," EHR, vol. 48, no. 3 (1995), pp. 591-98.

Allen, Robert. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge: CUP, 2009. Part II: The Industrial Revolution, pp. 133-276 Long selection, but good and readable. Consider also Allen's Very Short Introduction.

Further

Bruland, K., "Industrialisation and Technological Change," Ch. 5 in CEHMB, vol. I., pp. 117-146.

Crafts, Nicholas, "Exogenous or Endgogenous Growth? The Industrial Revolution Reconsidered," JEH, vol. 55 no. 4 (Dec. 1995), pp. 745-72.

Fremdling, Rainer, "Transfer Patterns of British Technology to the Continent: The Case of the Iron Industry," EREH, vol. 4 (2000), pp. 195-222.

Griffiths, Trevor, Philip Hunt and Patrick O'Brien, "Inventive Activity in the British Textile Industry, 1700-1800," JEH, vol. 52 (1992), pp. 881-906.

Horn, Jeff, "Avoiding Revolution: the French Path to Industrialization," Ch. 5 in Reconceptualizing the Industrial Revolution, J. Horn, N. Rosenband, and M. Roe Smith, eds. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 87-106.

--- . The Path not Taken. French Industrialization in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1830. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006.

--- . Economic Development in Early Modern France. The Privilege of Liberty, 1650-1820. Cambridge: CUP, 2015. Especially Ch. 7 "Privilege, Innovation, and the State: Entrepreneurialism and the lessons of the old régime," pp. 204-42.

--- , " 'A Beautiful Madness': Privilege, the Machine Question and Industrial Development in Normandy in 1789," Past and Present, no. 217 (Nov. 2012), pp. 149-85.

Jacobs, Margaret. The First Knowledge Economy. Human Capital and the European Economy, 1750-1850. Cambridge: CUP, 2014.

Khan, Zorina, "An Economic History of Patent Institutions" EH.net Encyclopaedia. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/khan.patents.

Landes, David. The Unbound Prometheus. Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present. Cambridge: CUP, 1969 or 2e/reprint 2003). Ch. 3 "Continental Emulation" pp. 124-192. A classic interpretation.

Macleod, Christine, "The European origins of British technological predominance," Ch. 5 in Exceptionalism and Industrialisation: Britain and its European Rivals, 1688-1815, Leandro Prados de la Escosura, ed. (Cambridge: CUP, 2004), oo. 111-26.

Mokyr, J. The Enlightened Economy, Chs. 6-7: "The Origins of British Technological Leadership" and "Technological Change and the Industrial Revolution," pp. 99-144.

Moser, Petra, "How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth Century World Fairs," The American Economic Review, vol. 95 (2005), pp. 1214-1236.

O'Brien, Patrick, Trevor Griffiths and Philip Hunt, "Technological Change During the First Industrial Revolution: the Paradigm Case of Cotton Textiles, 1688-1851" Ch. 9 in R. Fox (ed.), Technological Change (Routledge, 1998), pp. 155-176.

--- , "Political components of the industrial revolution: parliament and the English cotton textile industry, 1660-1774," EHR, vol. 44, no. 3 (Aug. 1991), pp. 394-423.

Squicciarini, M. and N. Voigtlander, "Human Capital and Industrialization: Evidence from the Age of the Enlightenment," NBER Working Paper 20219 (2014).

Nuvolari, A., G. Tortorici, and M. Vasta, "British-French Technology Transfer from The Revolution To Louis Philippe (1791-1844): Evidence from Patent Data", CEPR discussion paper no. 15620 (Dec. 2020).

Styles, J., "The Rise and Fall of the Spinning Jenny: Domestic Mechanisation in Eighteenth-Century Cotton Spinning," Textile History, vol. 51, no. 2 (Nov. 2020), pp. 195-236. Disputes Allen's story of why the spinning jenny could only have been invented in England.

Wrigley, E.A. Energy and the English Industrial Revolution. Cambridge: CUP, 2010. Not discussed in lecture but important for understanding energy's role in the economy and how it evolved over time.

Mokyr, Joel. The Gifts of Athena. Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy. Princeton: PUP, 2002. Chs. 2-3, pp. 28-118.

--- . The Lever of Riches. Technological Creativity and Economic Progress. Oxford: OUP, 1990. Ch. 10, pp. 239-269; Chs. 5-6, pp. 81-148.

Nye, John, "Firm Size and Economic Backwardness: A New Look at the French Industrialization Debate," JEH, vol. 47 (1987), pp. 649-61.

Sicsic, P., "Establishment Size and Economies of Scale in 19th-century France," EEH, vol. 31 (1994), pp. 453-78. Same topic as earlier Nye article.