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.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
8596.
Length: Date of creation: Nov 2001 Date of revision: Publication status: published relationship to a non-chapter. This should not happen. Please contact NBER. Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8596
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Chapter
Gregory Clark & Robert C. Feenstra, 2003.
"Technology in the Great Divergence,"
NBER Chapters,
in: Globalization in Historical Perspective, pages 277-322
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: N7 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services
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Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)
Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan & Bent E. Sørensen & Ariell Reshef & Oved Yosha, 2005.
"Why Does Capital Flow to Rich States?,"
Working Papers
2005-04, Department of Economics, University of Houston.
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