Technical Choice Innovation and Economic Growth: Essays on American and British Experience in the Nineteenth Century

This book deals with technological innovations of the nineteenth century. In a number of self-contained but related essays it treats the salient aspects of technological change that have interested modern economists and economic historians, as well as historians of technology: economically induced invention and innovation, learning by doing in industrial operations, the diffusion of new production techniques, and the bearing of these upon the growth of a society's productivity. The studies are detailed, in the sense that they focus not upon the economy as a whole, but rather upon the experiences of specific industries, branches of manufacturing, and individual productive units such as the mid-Victorial grain farm and the New England cotton textile mill. They attempt to integrate traditional historical methods and materials with a more explicit reliance on economic theorizing and applications of statistical analysis to test hypotheses.