IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/tpr/jeurec/v3y2005i2-3p525-534.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The First Industrial Revolution: Resolving the Slow Growth/Rapid Industrialization Paradox

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Crafts

    (London School of Economics,)

Abstract

The paper reviews recent attempts to quantify the British industrial revolution. It concludes that the episode was one of rapid industrialization but modest growth. To a considerable extent this is explained by the early adoption of capitalist farming and the weak impact of steam on productivity growth. However, this should not detract from a marked acceleration in the rate of technological change by the second quarter of the 19th century. This may be explicable in an endogenous innovation framework in terms of a reduced cost of accessing useful knowledge. Models of long-run growth should take this enhanced technological capability seriously. (JEL:N23) Copyright (c) 2005 The European Economic Association.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Crafts, 2005. "The First Industrial Revolution: Resolving the Slow Growth/Rapid Industrialization Paradox," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 525-534, 04/05.
    • Handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:3:y:2005:i:2-3:p:525-534
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1542-4774/issues
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jaume Ventura & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2015. "Debt into growth: How sovereign debt accelerated the first Industrial Revolution," Economics Working Papers 1483, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    2. Nico Voigtländer & Joachim Voth, 2005. "Why England? Demand, growth and inequality during the Industrial Revolution," Economics Working Papers 857, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Dec 2006.
    3. Bernard C. Beaudreau, 2023. "A Pull–Push Theory of Industrial Revolutions," International Advances in Economic Research, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 29(4), pages 303-317, November.
    4. Christopher Kennedy, 2021. "A biophysical model of the industrial revolution," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 25(3), pages 663-676, June.
    5. John Foster, 2015. "Energy, Knowledge and Economic Growth," Economic Complexity and Evolution, in: Andreas Pyka & John Foster (ed.), The Evolution of Economic and Innovation Systems, edition 127, pages 9-39, Springer.
    6. Oleg S. Sukharev, 2022. "Industrial growth and technological prospects," Journal of New Economy, Ural State University of Economics, vol. 23(1), pages 6-23, April.
    7. Jakob Madsen & James Ang & Rajabrata Banerjee, 2010. "Four centuries of British economic growth: the roles of technology and population," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 263-290, December.
    8. Aki Tomizawa & Li Zhao & Geneviève Bassellier & David Ahlstrom, 2020. "Economic growth, innovation, institutions, and the Great Enrichment," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 37(1), pages 7-31, March.
    9. Crafts, Nicholas & O’Rourke, Kevin Hjortshøj, 2014. "Twentieth Century Growth*This research has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement no. 249546.," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 6, pages 263-346, Elsevier.
    10. Oleg S. Sukharev, 2024. "Development of Russia’s industry: Some regularities and prospects," Journal of New Economy, Ural State University of Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 6-25, April.
    11. Nico Voigtländer & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2006. "Why England? Demographic factors, structural change and physical capital accumulation during the Industrial Revolution," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 319-361, December.
    12. McCloskey, Deirdre N., 2013. "Tunzelmann, Schumpeter, and the Hockey Stick," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 1706-1715.
    13. Leandro Prados de la Escosura & Tamás Vonyó & Ilya B. Voskoboynikov, 2021. "Accounting For Growth In History," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 655-669, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • N23 - Economic History - - Financial Markets and Institutions - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tpr:jeurec:v:3:y:2005:i:2-3:p:525-534. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kelly McDougall (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://direct.mit.edu/journals .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.