Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth: Essays on American and British Experience in the Nineteenth CenturyThis book deals with technological innovations of the nineteenth century. In a number of self-contained but related essays it treats the salient aspects of technological change that have interested modern economists and economic historians, as well as historians of technology: economically induced invention and innovation, learning by doing in industrial operations, the diffusion of new production techniques, and the bearing of these upon the growth of a society's productivity. The studies are detailed, in the sense that they focus not upon the economy as a whole, but rather upon the experiences of specific industries, branches of manufacturing, and individual productive units such as the mid-Victorial grain farm and the New England cotton textile mill. They attempt to integrate traditional historical methods and materials with a more explicit reliance on economic theorizing and applications of statistical analysis to test hypotheses. |
Contents
and progress in nineteenthcentury America 19 | 19 |
Generation | 55 |
The mechanization of reaping in the antebellum Midwest | 195 |
Threshold farm size | 220 |
Technical notes | 276 |
References | 315 |
Other editions - View all
Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth: Essays on American and ... Paul A. David No preview available - 1975 |
Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth: Essays on American and ... Paul A. David No preview available - 1975 |
Common terms and phrases
ยน Cf acre aggregate agricultural annual ante-bellum argument average bias Blackstone Britain British Cambridge capital capital-intensive comparative connexion costs cotton textile industry drainage econometric Economic Growth Economic History efficiency elasticity equation estimates exogenous factor-prices farm farmers Figure firms Fogel's grain acreage growth rate Habakkuk hand-rake harvest Horndal innovation input investment isoquant Journal of Economic Klundert labor productivity Labor Scarcity land improvements latter learning coefficient learning effects machinery manufacturing marginal mechanical reaping neoclassical nineteenth century operations parameter period Peter Temin problem production experience production function productivity growth railroad random walk rate of return ratio reaper reaping machine regression relative relevant returns to scale Rothbarth-Habakkuk thesis sample group scale small grain social savings specific Statistics Stettler Table tariff technical change techniques technological change technological progress Temin Theory threshold tion transportation United University Press wage rates wheat wheat and oats yield Zevin