Why did the industrial revolution take place in eighteenth-century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? In this convincing new account Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He shows that in Britain wages were high and capital and energy cheap in comparison to other countries in Europe and Asia. As a result, the breakthrough technologies of the industrial revolution - the steam engine, the cotton mill, and the substitution of coal for wood in metal production - were uniquely profitable to invent and use in Britain. The high wage economy of pre-industrial Britain also fostered industrial development since more people could afford schooling and apprenticeships. It was only when British engineers made these new technologies more cost-effective during the nineteenth century that the industrial revolution would spread around the world.

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The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective

The Maddison Project, initiated in March 2010 by a group of close colleagues of Angus Maddison, aims to develop an effective system of cooperation between scholars to continue Maddison's work on measuring economic performance in the world economy. This article is a first product of the project. Its goal is to explain the aims and approach of the project, and, as a first result of this ‘collaboratory’, to inventory recent research on historical national accounts. We also briefly discuss some of the problems related to these historical statistics and we extend and where necessary revise the estimates published by Maddison in his latest overviews. Most new work relates to the period before 1820; it leads to a reassessment of levels of GDP per capita in western Europe in the early modern period, and to a confirmation of Maddison's previous estimates of Asian levels of real income.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/EHR_EHR12032.pdf?abstractid=2464801&mirid=4

The Maddison Project: collaborative research on historical national accounts

This article develops data on the history of wages and prices in Beijing, Canton, and Suzhou/Shanghai in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, and compares them with leading cities in Europe, Japan, and India in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of living. In the eighteenth century, the real income of building workers in Asia was similar to that of workers in the backward parts of Europe but far behind that in the leading economies in north-western Europe. Real wages stagnated in China in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and rose slowly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth, with little cumulative change for 200 years. The income disparities of the early twentieth century were due to long-run stagnation in China combined with industrialization in Japan and Europe.

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Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India

The most-noted studies on the impact of microcredit on households are based on a survey fielded in Bangladesh in the 1990s. Contradictions among them have produced lasting controversy and confusion. Pitt and Khandker (PK, 1998) apply a quasi-experimental design to 1991–92 data; they conclude that microcredit raises household consumption, especially when lent to women. Khandker (2005) applies panel methods using a 1999 resurvey; he concurs and extrapolates to conclude that microcredit helps the extremely poor even more than the moderately poor. But using simpler estimators than PK, Morduch (1999) finds no impact on the level of consumption in the 1991–92 data, even as he questions PK’s identifying assumptions. He does find evidence that microcredit reduces consumption volatility. Partly because of the sophistication of PK’s Maximum Likelihood estimator, the conflicting results were never directly confronted and reconciled. We end the impasse. A replication exercise shows that all these studies’ evidence for impact is weak. As for PK’s headline results, we obtain opposite signs. But we do not conclude that lending to women does harm. Rather, all three studies appear to fail in expunging endogeneity. We conclude that for non-experimental methods to retain a place in the program evaluator’s portfolio, the quality of the claimed natural experiments must be high and demonstrated.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1872033_code1349245.pdf?abstractid=1872033&mirid=3

The Impact of Microcredit on the Poor in Bangladesh: Revisiting the Evidence

The City in Late Imperial China.

The paper develops data on the history of wages and prices in China from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. These data are used to compare Beijing, Canton, Suzhou and Shanghai to leading cities in Europe, India, and Japan in terms of nominal wages, the cost of living, and the standard of living. In the eighteenth century, the real income of building workers in Asia was similar to that of workers in the backward parts of Europe and far behind that of workers in the leading economies in northwestern Europe. Industrialization led to rising real wages in Europe and Japan. Real wages declined in China in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and rose slowly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth. There was little cumulative change in the standard of living of workers in Beijing, Canton, and lower Yangzi cities for two hundred years. The income disparities of the early twentieth century were due to long run stagnation in China combined with economic development in Japan and Europe.

Wages, Prices, and Living Standards in China, Japan, and Europe, 1738-1925.

Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738-1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India

General introduction Christine Moll Murata and Karin Hofmeester Part I. Theory: 1. Towards a global history of work ethics, 1500-1650: some preliminaries Marcel van der Linden Part II. Europe: 2. Gender norms and work roles Ariadne Schmidt 3. Between sin and salvation, the seventeenth-century Dutch artisan Pieter Plockhoy and his ethics of work ca.1650: text by artisan on utopian community Henk Looijesteijn 4. Work, commerce and wages: looking for labour ideologies in early modern Italy (1500-1650) Luca Mocarelli 5. The just wage in early modern Italy: a reflection on Zacchia's 'De Salario seu Operaiorum Mercede' Andrea Caracausi 6. Religious aspects of labour ethics in medieval and early modern Russia Arkady Tarasov Part III. Islamic World/Ottoman Empire: 7. Cairo in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Nora Lafi 8. Jewish ethics on women's work in the late medieval Islamic world: Maimonides versus social practice Karin Hofmeester.

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Christine Moll-Murata

Papers

Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738–1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India

Wages, Prices, and Living Standards in China, Japan, and Europe, 1738-1925.

Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738-1925: in comparison with Europe, Japan, and India

The Joy and Pain of Work: Global Attitudes and Valuations, 1500–1650 Introduction

Wages, prices, and living standards in China, 1738-1925