Abstract
During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today’s unprecedented prosperity? The speaker argues that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive “market for ideas” and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity.
About the speaker
Prof Joel Mokyr received his Bachelor degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his PhD from Yale University. He joined Northwestern University in 1974, and has been a visiting Professor at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Stanford University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Tel Aviv University, University College of Dublin, and the University of Manchester respectively. He is currently the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Senior Professor (by special appointment) at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at the Tel Aviv University. He served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at Northwestern University between 1998 and 2001 and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford between September 2001 and June 2002. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Cliometric Society.
Prof Mokyr’s current research interests are economic history and the economics of technological change and population change. He is an author of more than 100 articles and books in his field. His most recent book, A Culture of Growth, is to be published by Princeton University Press in 2016. He was awarded the biennial Heineken Prize by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences for a lifetime achievement in historical science in 2016 and the Balzan Prize for Economic History in 2015. He was also the recipient of a number of important prizes including the Joseph Schumpeter memorial prize in 1990, the Ranki Prize for the best book in European economic history and the Donald Price Prize of the American Political Science Association.
Prof Mokyr has served as the senior editor of the Journal of Economic History from 1994 to 1998, the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (published in 2003), and the editor in chief of a book series, the Princeton University Press Economic History of the Western World. He served as President of the Economic History Association from 2003 to 2004, and is a director of the US National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as chair of the advisory committee of the Institutions, Organizations, and Growth program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research.
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