The First Great Divergence?

The Evolution of Technology Diffusion and the Great Divergence

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY New technologies disseminate increasingly rapidly from rich to poor countries but poor countries struggle to employ these technologies with the same degree of intensity and versatility. This suggests that the potential for technological leap-frogging is over-hyped. The challenge for poor countries is to invest in the right kinds of knowledge so that imported technologies can b...

Trade and the Great Divergence: The Family Connection

This research argues that the rapid expansion of international trade in the second phase of the industrial revolution has played a major role in the timing of demographic transitions across countries and has thereby been a significant determinant of the distribution of world population and a prime cause of the ‘Great Divergence’ in income per capita across countries in the last two centuries. T...

America's First Great Moderation

The Great American Schism: Divergence of Marine Organisms After the Rise of the Central American Isthmus

After a 12-million-year (My) process, the Central American Isthmus was completed 2.8 My ago. Its emergence affected current flow, salinity, temperature, and primary productivity of the Pacific and the Atlantic and launched marine organisms of the two oceans into independent evolutionary trajectories. Those that did not go extinct have diverged. As no vicariant event is better dated than the ist...

The great divergence: when did diversity on land exceed that in the sea?

Between 85% and 95% of all living macroscopic species are found on land; the rest are mainly marine. We argue that the extraordinary diversity on land is geologically recent, dating from the mid-Cretaceous period, ∼110 million years ago. We suggest that the ability and necessity to be rare--that is, to maintain populations at low density--are made possible by the low cost of mobility of consume...