
Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth
Essays on American and British Experience in the Nineteenth Century
Paul A. David(Author)
Cambridge University Press
Published on 15. May 1975
Book
Hardback
344 pages
978-0-521-20518-4 (ISBN)
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Description
This 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.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Weight
581 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-20518-4 (9780521205184)
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Paul A. David
Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth
Essays on American and British Experience in the Nineteenth Century
Book
02/1975
Cambridge University Press
€71.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Additional editions

Paul A. David
Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth
Essays on American and British Experience in the Nineteenth Century
Book
02/1975
Cambridge University Press
€71.30
Shipment within 15-20 days
Content
Acknowledgements; Introduction: technology, history and growth; Part I. Concepts and Preconceptions: 1. Labor scarcity and the problem of technological practice and progress in nineteenth-century America; Part II. Generation: 2. Learning by doing and tariff protection: a reconsideration of the case of the ante-bellum United States cotton textile industry; Addendum: estimated rates of labor equality change; 3. The 'Horndal effect' in Lowell, 1834-56: a short-run learning curve for integrated cotton textile mills; Part III. Diffusion: 4. The mechanization of reaping in the ante-bellum Midwest; Addendum: threshold farm size; 5. The landscape and the machine: technical interrelatedness, land tenure and the mechanization of the corn harvest in Victorian Britain; Appendix A: technical notes; Appendix B: source of the parameters and variables; Part IV. Ramifications: 6. Transport innovations and economic growth: Professor Fogel on and off the rails; References; Index.