Favorites of Fortune: Technology, Growth, and Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution / Edition 1

by Patrice Higonnet, David S. Landes, Henry Rosovsky

Overview

A galaxy of distinguished international economists and historians pit economic history against the shaky assumptions of the classical economic theory of natural growth. Their explanations consider the factors of technology, entrepreneurialism, and paths to economic growth, but each reflects an ideological wave of explanation that has marked the last two hundred years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674295216
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/11/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	1,085,070
Product dimensions:	6.38(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Patrice Higonnet is Robert Walton Goelet Professor of French History at Harvard University.

David S. Landes was Coolidge Professor of History and Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Harvard University, and the author of The Wealth and Poverty of Nations.

Henry Rosovsky was the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.

Table of Contents

David S. Landes Introduction: On Technology and Growth

I. Technology

Robert W. Fogel The Conquest of High Mortality and Hunger in Europe and America: Timing and Mechanisms

Paul A. David The Hero and the Herd in Technological History: Reflections on Thomas Edison and the Battle of the Systems

Rudolf Braun The "Docile" Body as an Economic-Industrial Growth Factor

Wolfram Fischer The Choice of Technique: Entrepreneurial Decisions in the Nineteenth-Century European Cotton and Steel Industries

Paul Bairoch The City and Technological Innovation

Joel Mokyr Dear Labor, Cheap Labor, and the Industrial Revolution

II. Entrepreneurialism

Robert C. Allen Entrepreneurship, Total Factor Productivity, and Economic Efficiency: Landes, Solow, and Farrell Thirty Years Later

François Crouzet The Huguenots and the English Financial Revolution

William Lazonick What Happened to the Theory of Economic Development?

Jonathan Hughes Public Sector Entrepreneurship

François Jequier Employment Strategies and Production Structures in the Swiss Watchmaking Industry

Peter Temin Entrepreneurs and Managers

III. Paths of Economic Growth

Jeffrey G. Williamson Did England's Cities Grow Too Fast during the Industrial Revolution?

W. W. Rostow Technology and the Economic Theorist: Past, Present, and Future

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. Creating Competitive Capability: Innovation and Investment in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany from the 1870s to World War I

Anne O. Krueger Benefits and Costs of Late Development

Irma Adelman Prometheus Unbound and Developing Countries

Claudia Goldin Marriage Bars: Discrimination against Married Women Workers from the 1920s to the 1950s

Contributors

Index

Editorial Reviews

A most important book...[It] contains a conspectus of the variety of work that goes into our studies nowadays: biometrics and cliometrics; theory and a review of theory; broad sweeps of generalizations, detailed research on a micro scale, and international comparison; some sociology; and some institutional politics...A rich offering.

Journal of Economic History - Sidney Pollard

A stimulating and fascinating volume that should be in the library of anyone interested in economic history or technology.

Journal of Evolutionary Economics - John Vincent Nye

A most important book...[It] contains a conspectus of the variety of work that goes into our studies nowadays: biometrics and cliometrics; theory and a review of theory; broad sweeps of generalizations, detailed research on a micro scale, and international comparison; some sociology; and some institutional politics...A rich offering.
— Sidney Pollard

Journal of Economic History

A stimulating and fascinating volume that should be in the library of anyone interested in economic history or technology.
— John Vincent Nye

Journal of Evolutionary Economics