Technology in the Great Divergence / Gregory Clark, Robert Feenstra.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Clark, Gregory.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Feenstra, Robert.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w8596.

NBER working paper series no. w8596

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2001.

Summary:

In this paper, we examine the changes in per-capita income and productivity from 1700 to modern times, and show four things: (1) that incomes per capita diverged more around the world after 1800 than before; (2) that the source of this divergence was increasing differences in the efficiency of economies; (3) that these differences in efficiency were not due to problems of poor countries in getting access to the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution; (4) that the pattern of trade from the late nineteenth century between the poor and the rich economies suggests that the problem of the poor economies was peculiarly a problem of employing labor effectively. This continues to be true today.

Notes:

Print version record

November 2001.