There are two views of the British Industrial Revolution in the literature today. The more traditional description, represented by the views of Ashton and Landes, sees the Industrial Revolution as a broad change in the British economy and society. This broad view of the Industrial Revolution has...

Why did per capita income divergence occur so dramatically during the 19th Century, rather than at the outset of the Industrial Revolution? How were some countries able to reverse this trend during the globalization of the late 20th Century? To answer these questions, this paper develops a...

Employing a sample of renowned U.S. inventors that combines biographical detail with information on the patents they received over their careers, we highlight the impact of early U.S. patent institutions in providing broad access to economic opportunity and in encouraging trade in new...

For those who think of Cleveland as a decaying rustbelt city, it may seem difficult to believe that this northern Ohio port was once a hotbed of high-tech startups, much like Silicon Valley today. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Cleveland played a leading role in the...

Using a large, individual-level wage data set, we examine the impact of a major technological innovation the steam engine on skill demand and the wage structure in the merchant shipping industry. We find that the technical change created a new demand for skilled workers, the engineers, while...

We construct a simple model where political elites may block technological and institutional development, because of a 'political replacement effect'. Innovations often erode elites' incumbency advantage, increasing the likelihood that they will be replaced. Fearing replacement, political elites...

During the Second Industrial Revolution, 1860-1900, many new technologies, including electricity, were invented. These inventions launched a transition to a new economy, a period of about 70 years of ongoing, rapid technical change. After this revolution began, however, several decades passed...