The Wheels of Change

Technology Adoption, Millwrights and the Persistence in Britain'S Industrialisation

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9707714
AutoresJoel Mokyr (Northwestern University, autor correspondente), Assaf Sarid (0000-0002-1213-8475, University of Haifa), Karine Van Der Beek (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Ano2022
Volume132
Fascículo645
Páginas1894-1926
Data de publicação2022-06-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThe Economic Journal (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-0133 • E-ISSN: 1468-0297
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ej/ueab102
OpenAlexW4220658794
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas47

This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capital and industrialisation. We argue that mechanical skills and competence were a main determinant of the location of industry on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. It concentrates on the case of millwrights, eighteenth-century specialists in advanced carpentry and hydraulic machinery. Millwrights were a key part of the upper tail of the distribution of mechanical abilities. Their emergence was determined by the early adoption of watermills in the Middle Ages as recorded in the Domesday Book survey (1086). Their location displays considerable persistence

Carpentry · Civil engineering · Competence (human resources · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Human capital · Industrial Revolution · Industrialisation · Management · Market economy · Persistence (discontinuity · Political science · Technological change · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Engineering · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis