Download or read book The Enlightened Economy written by Joel Mokyr and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In a vigorous discussion, which goes beyond the standard explanations that credit geographical factors, the role of markets, politics and society, Mokyr argues that the bases of the emergence of modern economic growth in Britain are to be found in what key players knew and believed, and how those convictions affected their economic behaviour. The belief in progress, coupled with the strategies to bring it about led Britain, and eventually most of the western world, into the modern era." "With a remarkably wide range of reference, and covering sectors of the British economy often neglected, this masterful book both synthesizes existing scholarship and provides a wholly new perspective for understanding Britain's economic development in the ageof the Industrial Revolution." --Book Jacket.
Download or read book The Enlightened Economy written by Joel Mokyr and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on the importance of ideological and institutional factors in the rapid development of the British economy during the years between the Glorious Revolution and the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Joel Mokyr shows that we cannot understand the Industrial Revolution without recognizing the importance of the intellectual sea changes of Britain's Age of Enlightenment. In a vigorous discussion, Mokyr goes beyond the standard explanations that credit geographical factors, the role of markets, politics, and society to show that the beginnings of modern economic growth in Britain depended a great deal on what key players knew and believed, and how those beliefs affected their economic behavior. He argues that Britain led the rest of Europe into the Industrial Revolution because it was there that the optimal intersection of ideas, culture, institutions, and technology existed to make rapid economic growth achievable. His wide-ranging evidence covers sectors of the British economy often neglected, such as the service industries.
Download or read book ECONOMIC SENTIMENTS written by Emma Rothschild and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-02-04 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A benchmark in the history of economics and of political ideas, Rothschild shows us the origins of laissez-faire economic thought and its relation to political conseratism in an unquiet world.
Download or read book The Enlightened Economy written by Joel Mokyr and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2011-05-05 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mokyr argues that the early shape & pace of modern economic development in Britain depended as much on what key players knew & believed as any other factors. He contends that this explains why Britain took the lead in the Industrial Revolution.
Download or read book A Culture of Growth written by Joel Mokyr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-15 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.
Download or read book The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective written by Robert C. Allen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-09 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the industrial revolution take place in 18th century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Download or read book Patrons of Enlightenment written by Colum Leckey and published by University of Delaware. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patrons of Enlightenment is the first English language study of the St. Petersburg Free Economic Study, one of the most prestigious and influential public associations in Imperial Russian history. Established in 1765 under the personal protection of Catherine the Great, its mission was to enlighten the villages and country estates of the Russian Empire by spreading the gospel of scientific agriculture to noble landowners and the peasants working their land. Emulating the patriotic associations of Western and Central Europe, it also sought to put the finishing touches on the cultural westernization of Russia initiated by the reforming tsar Peter the Great. Within the walls of its meeting house in St. Petersburg, it offered a neutral space where people of different rank, status, and lineage assembled to debate the great issues of the day, above all else the role of a privileged and enlightened nobility in a society anchored in serfdom. For its network of readers and correspondents in the provinces, it provided an opportunity to earn distinction on Russia's public stage through its voluminous publications and its flagship journal, the Transactions of the Free Economic Society. The Society provided the template for public activity and initiative in Imperial Russia, as hundreds of other organizations in the nineteenth century would emulate its example.
Download or read book Productivity Machines written by Corinna Schlombs and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How productivity culture and technology became emblematic of the American economic system in pre- and postwar Germany. The concept of productivity originated in a statistical measure of output per worker or per work-hour, calculated by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. A broader productivity culture emerged in 1920s America, as Henry Ford and others linked methods of mass production and consumption to high wages and low prices. These ideas were studied eagerly by a Germany in search of economic recovery after World War I, and, decades later, the Marshall Plan promoted productivity in its efforts to help post–World War II Europe rebuild. In Productivity Machines, Corinna Schlombs examines the transatlantic history of productivity technology and culture in the two decades before and after World War II. She argues for the interpretive flexibility of productivity: different groups viewed productivity differently at different times. Although it began as an objective measure, productivity came to be emblematic of the American economic system; post-World War II West Germany, however, adapted these ideas to its own political and economic values. Schlombs explains that West German unionists cast a doubtful eye on productivity's embrace of plant-level collective bargaining; unions fought for codetermination—the right to participate in corporate decisions. After describing German responses to US productivity, Schlombs offers an in-depth look at labor relations in one American company in Germany—that icon of corporate America, IBM. Finally, Schlombs considers the emergence of computer technology—seen by some as a new symbol of productivity but by others as the means to automate workers out of their jobs.
Download or read book Agricultural Enlightenment written by Peter Jones and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Agricultural Enlightenment explores the modernization of the rural economy in Europe through the lens of the Enlightenment. It focuses on the second half of the eighteenth century and emphasizes the role of useful knowledge in the process of agrarian change and agricultural development. As such it invites economic historians to respond to the challenge issued by Joel Mokyr to look beyond quantitative data and to take seriously the argument that cultural factors, broadly understood, may have aided or hindered the evolution of agriculture in the early modern period ("what people knew and believed" had a direct bearing on their economic behavior Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy]). Evidence in support of the idea that a readily accessible supply of agricultural knowledge helps to explain the trajectory of the rural economy is drawn from all of the countries of Europe. The book includes two cases studies of rapid rural modernization in Scotland and Denmark where Agricultural Enlightenment was swiftly followed by full-scale Agricultural Revolution.
Download or read book Institutions Innovation and Industrialization written by Avner Greif and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a group of leading economic historians to examine how institutions, innovation, and industrialization have determined the development of nations. Presented in honor of Joel Mokyr—arguably the preeminent economic historian of his generation—these wide-ranging essays address a host of core economic questions. What are the origins of markets? How do governments shape our economic fortunes? What role has entrepreneurship played in the rise and success of capitalism? Tackling these and other issues, the book looks at coercion and exchange in the markets of twelfth-century China, sovereign debt in the age of Philip II of Spain, the regulation of child labor in nineteenth-century Europe, meat provisioning in pre–Civil War New York, aircraft manufacturing before World War I, and more. The book also features an essay that surveys Mokyr's important contributions to the field of economic history, and an essay by Mokyr himself on the origins of the Industrial Revolution. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Gergely Baics, Hoyt Bleakley, Fabio Braggion, Joyce Burnette, Louis Cain, Mauricio Drelichman, Narly Dwarkasing, Joseph Ferrie, Noel Johnson, Eric Jones, Mark Koyama, Ralf Meisenzahl, Peter Meyer, Joel Mokyr, Lyndon Moore, Cormac Ó Gráda, Rick Szostak, Carolyn Tuttle, Karine van der Beek, Hans-Joachim Voth, and Simone Wegge.
Download or read book The Pricing of Progress written by Eli Cook and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did Americans come to quantify their society’s progress and well-being in units of money? In today’s GDP-run world, prices are the standard measure of not only our goods and commodities but our environment, our communities, our nation, even our self-worth. The Pricing of Progress traces the long history of how and why we moderns adopted the monetizing values and valuations of capitalism as an indicator of human prosperity while losing sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life. Eli Cook roots the rise of economic indicators in the emergence of modern capitalism and the contested history of English enclosure, Caribbean slavery, American industrialization, economic thought, and corporate power. He explores how the maximization of market production became the chief objective of American economic and social policy. We see how distinctly capitalist quantification techniques used to manage or invest in railroad corporations, textile factories, real estate holdings, or cotton plantations escaped the confines of the business world and seeped into every nook and cranny of society. As economic elites quantified the nation as a for-profit, capitalized investment, the progress of its inhabitants, free or enslaved, came to be valued according to their moneymaking abilities. Today as in the nineteenth century, political struggles rage over who gets to determine the statistical yardsticks used to gauge the “health” of our economy and nation. The Pricing of Progress helps us grasp the limits and dangers of entrusting economic indicators to measure social welfare and moral goals.
Download or read book The Humane Economy written by Wayne Pacelle and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-04-19 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major new exploration of the economics of animal exploitation and a practical roadmap for how we can use the marketplace to promote the welfare of all living creatures, from the renowned animal-rights advocate Wayne Pacelle, President/CEO of the Humane Society of the United States and New York Times bestselling author of The Bond. In the mid-nineteenth century, New Bedford, Massachusetts was the whaling capital of the world. A half-gallon of sperm oil cost approximately $1,400 in today’s dollars, and whale populations were hunted to near extinction for profit. But with the advent of fossil fuels, the whaling industry collapsed, and today, the area around New Bedford is instead known as one of the best places in the world for whale watching. This transformation is emblematic of a new sort of economic revolution, one that has the power to transform the future of animal welfare. In The Humane Economy, Wayne Pacelle, President/CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, explores how our everyday economic decisions impact the survival and wellbeing of animals, and how we can make choices that better support them. Though most of us have never harpooned a sea creature, clubbed a seal, or killed an animal for profit, we are all part of an interconnected web that has a tremendous impact on animal welfare, and the decisions we make—whether supporting local, not industrial, farming; adopting a rescue dog or a shelter animal instead of one from a “puppy mill”; avoiding products that compromise the habitat of wild species; or even seeing Cirque du Soleil instead of Ringling Brothers—do matter. The Humane Economy shows us how what we do everyday as consumers can benefit animals, the environment, and human society, and why these decisions can make economic sense as well.
Download or read book The Economic Turn written by Steven Kaplan and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2019-01-16 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mid-eighteenth century witnessed what might be dubbed an economic turn that resolutely changed the trajectory of world history. The discipline of economics itself emerged amidst this turn, and it is frequently traced back to the work of François Quesnay and his school of Physiocracy. Though lionized by the subsequent historiography of economics, the theoretical postulates and policy consequences of Physiocracy were disastrous at the time, resulting in a veritable subsistence trauma in France. This galvanized relentless and diverse critiques of the doctrine not only in France but also throughout the European world that have, hitherto, been largely neglected by scholars. Though Physiocracy was an integral part of the economic turn, it was rapidly overcome, both theoretically and practically, with durable and important consequences for the history of political economy. The Economic Turn brings together some of the leading historians of that moment to fundamentally recast our understanding of the origins and diverse natures of political economy in the Enlightenment.
Download or read book The Politics of Enlightenment written by Vincenzo Ferrone and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by one of Italy's leading historians, this book analyses the Neapolitan nobleman Gaetano Filangieri and his seven-volume 'Science of Legislation' in their historical context, expounding on his legacy for the histories of constitutional republicanism, liberalism, and political economy.
Download or read book Assetization written by Kean Birch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the asset—anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. An asset can be an object or an experience, a sum of money or a life form, a patent or a bodily function. A process of assetization prevails, imposing investment and return as the key rationale, and overtaking commodification and its speculative logic. Although assets can be bought and sold, the point is to get a durable economic rent from them rather than make a killing on the market. Assetization examines how assets are constructed and how a variety of things can be turned into assets, analyzing the interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations entangled in this process. The contributors consider the assetization of knowledge, including patents, personal data, and biomedical innovation; of infrastructure, including railways and energy; of nature, including mineral deposits, agricultural seeds, and “natural capital”; and of publics, including such public goods as higher education and “monetizable social ills.” Taken together, the chapters show the usefulness of assetization as an analytical tool and as an element in the critique of capitalism. Contributors Thomas Beauvisage, Kean Birch, Veit Braun, Natalia Buier, Béatrice Cointe, Paul Robert Gilbert, Hyo Yoon Kang, Les Levidow, Kevin Mellet, Sveta Milyaeva, Fabian Muniesa, Alain Nadaï, Daniel Neyland, Victor Roy, James W. Williams
Download or read book Bettering Humanomics written by Deirdre Nansen McCloskey and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-06-05 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deirdre Nansen McCloskey's latest meticulous work examines how economics can become a more "human" science. Economic historian Deirdre Nansen McCloskey has distinguished herself through her writing on the Great Enrichment and the betterment of the poor—not just materially but spiritually. In Bettering Humanomics she continues her intellectually playful yet rigorous analysis with a focus on humans rather than the institutions. Going against the grain of contemporary neo-institutional and behavioral economics which privilege observation over understanding, she asserts her vision of “humanomics,” which draws on the work of Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith, and most prominently, Adam Smith. She argues for an economics that uses a comprehensive understanding of human action beyond behaviorism. McCloskey clearly articulates her points of contention with believers in “imperfections,” from Samuelson to Stiglitz, claiming that they have neglected scientific analysis in their haste to diagnose the ills of the system. In an engaging and erudite manner, she reaffirms the global successes of market-tested betterment and calls for empirical investigation that advances from material incentives to an awareness of the human within historical and ethical frameworks. Bettering Humanomics offers a critique of contemporary economics and a proposal for an economics as a better human science.
Download or read book The Enlightenment written by John Robertson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction explores the history of the 18th-century Enlightenment movement. Considering its intellectual commitments, Robertson then turns to their impact on society, and the ways in which Enlightenment thinkers sought to further the goal of human betterment, by promoting economic improvement and civil and political justice.
