This paper constructs a two-sector unified growth model. Learning-by-doing in agriculture eventually allows the preindustrial economy to leave its Malthusian trap. But entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector do not attempt invention if not much is known about natural phenomena. This delays the industrial revolution. Since entrepreneurs identify new useful knowledge at all times in a serendipi...

The Industrial Revolution and the Demographic Transition are the two great forces that explain the upward march of modern incomes. This paper sets out the empirical realities attempts to unify these events through theories of human capital investment have to meet. The major difficulty is to form an explanation which connects them which can also reconcile the seeming differences in fertility beh...

Many view the period after the Second Industrial Revolution as a paradigm of a transition to a new economy following a technological revolution, including the Information Technology Revolution. We build a quantitative model of diffusion and growth during transitions to evaluate that view. With a learning process quantified by data on the life cycle of US manufacturing plants, the model accounts...

In pre-industrial economies labour supply curves often bend backwards at very low levels of income. This changed prior to the industrial revolution: total working hours increased (De Vries (1993, Voth (1998,2000). This paper examines this industrious revolution using a model of labour supply where consumption takes time. This analytical framework enables us to draw a distinction between a pessi...