Historians used to accept changes in people’s behavior as an explanation for economic events, like Max Weber’s thesis linking the rise of capitalism with Protestantism. But most have now swung to the economists’ view that all people are alike and will respond in the same way to the same incentives. Hence they seek to explain events like the Industrial Revolution in terms of changes in institutions, not people.
Dr. Clark’s view is that institutions and incentives have been much the same all along and explain very little, which is why there is so little agreement on the causes of the Industrial Revolution. In saying the answer lies in people’s behavior, he is asking his fellow economic historians to revert to a type of explanation they had mostly abandoned and in addition is evoking an idea that historians seldom consider as an explanatory variable, that of evolution.
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
a Theory of Affluence
for you social scientist / economist types: In Dusty Archives, a Theory of Affluence. here is a synopsis.
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That is interesting... but what about the invention of steam power, the development of Newtons laws of mechanics, and England's propitious position as a central trading centre with access to the resources from the new world? Without those would there have been an industrial revolution?
And in fact insitutional changes have brought about huge changes in places- such as the asian tigers, india, china, and CHile.
Anyway, the explanation will always be multi-faceted...
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