VanderWeele et al.'s paper is a useful contribution to the on-going scientific conversation about the detection of contagion from purely observational data. It is especially helpful as a corrective to some of the more extreme statements of Lyons (2011). Unfortunately, this paper, too, goes too...

This Element develops an innovative combinatorial model of technological change and tests it with 2,000 years of data from global GDP data and US patents, thus generating the observed historical pattern of technological change. This Element models the Industrial Revolution as a combinatorial...