Why Did the Industrial Revolution Start in Britain?

The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China

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Why Was the Industrial Revolution a European Phenomenon?

Introduction Introduction The new growth economics has restored technological progress to the center of the debate about why economic growth occurs. There is no question that in some way new technology can bring about a period of rapid economic growth, whether measured in terms of productivity growth or in the more subtle improvements in the quality of life that occur through improvements in pr...

Why England? Demand, Growth and Inequality During the Industrial Revolution

Why was England first? And why Europe? We present a probabilistic model that builds on big-push models by Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny (1989), combined with hierarchical preferences. The interaction of exogenous demographic factors (in particular the English low-pressure variant of the European marriage pattern) and redistributive institutions – such as the “old Poor Law” – combined to make an I...

The Industrial Revolution in Miniature

This paper uses the adoption and invention of the spinning jenny as a test case to understand why the industrial revolution occurred in Britain in the eighteenth century rather than in France or India. It is shown that wages were much higher relative to capital prices in Britain than in other countries. Calculation of the profitability of adopting the spinning jenny shows that it was profitable...

The New Industrial Revolution