To Summarize
2015-10-04
In the fist half the author pins down three major forces underlying British success: long-haired sheep (due Black Death and British agricultural conditions),cheap coal (and corresponding technologies induced) and the imperial foreign policy (behind urban economy and international trade). A system of equations estimated are used to discriminate different historical narratives, dynamically interwoving real wage, urbanization rate, agricultural TFP, non-agricultural population, land-labor ratio, absolute monarchs, land enclosure, energy price, urbanization rate 100 years before and textile productivity. Simulation by successively dropping one explanatory variable demonstrates relative importance of such factors as representative government, enclosure, new draperies, intercontinental trade and coals, etc.
In the second half the author is specific in why and how biased innovation and technology improvements happened in British due to its high wage economy, but not in other countries such as France or China, etc. The central role was played by economic incentives behind these developments. The author also shows how the biased technologies turned into neutral ones that were profitable in most western countries. Technologies of the steam engine, cotton production and coke smelting are explored in historical details to give evidential support. Besides, the author also uses biographical information of the major inventors then to test the enlightenment model which emphasizes intellectual social networks, experimentation and social class, as well as to show the incentives behind and the role played by human capital investments. It then concludes, based on international comparison, that technology demand played a more important role than inventor supply behind British success.
Finally, the author briefly argues that the British industrial revolution was continued into modern economics growth due the transformative nature of its technology.
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