Show Me Listing

Online Ebooks (PDF) Library

• Home
• Popular
• Latest
• Contact

Home » Economic » Economic History

Economic History and the New Economy Joel Mokyr Professor of ...

Source: www.faculty.econ.northwestern.edu
Topic: Economic History

Sort Desciption: In economic history much of the change that. matters is quiet underneath the surface and the effects dont show up. until a generation later. ...

Content Inside: 1 Economic History and the New Economy Joel Mokyr Professor of Economics Northwestern University j-mokyr@Northwestern.edu Presented to NABE Sept. 12 2000 I suppose I am in a somewhat unique position to speak about the new economy for two reasons. One is that I am an economic historian who has written a bit about the Industrial Revolution and a lot of economists are asking me well are we in another Industrial Revolution? The other is that one of the leading new-economy skeptics Robert J. Gordon is my Northwestern colleague and close friend and everything I say about the topic will have to withstand his scrutiny. Are we really in a new economy? I am always tempted to give the classic answer given by the Chinese Communist leader and revolutionary Zhou-en Lai who was once asked on a visit to Paris whether he thought the French Revolution had been a success. His response was its too soon to tell. Now of course economic and technological revolutions are not like political revolutions. There are no Bastilles to be stormed no Petrograd Soviets to grab power. In economic history much of the change that matters is quiet underneath the surface and the effects dont show up until a generation later. The classic British Industrial Revolution for instancewas barely noted for decades by contemporaries. Even those who noticed the innovations around them did not suspect that continuous innovation and productivity growth were there to stay and turn from rare 2 eventsinto a sustained and normal condition. Most of the macroeconomic effects do not show up in the aggregative statistics such as they are until many decades after the great inventions. It has been customary among economists to judge technological changes by measures of productivity and growth. This is natural and normal and I would be the last person to deny that if change is real it will eventually show up in productivity changes if properly measured. Therein howeverlies the rub. Productivity is a ratio of ...

joel mokyr new economy, mokyr new economic history

©2007 Show Me Listing - Designed by Free CSS Templates

RSS Feed Sitemap Privacy Policy