The Roots of Growth: Review of Joel Mokyr: “A Culture of Growth”

The roots of growth: Brad DeLong examines a study that places the origins of the Industrial Revolution in fifteenth-century Europe.

A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy
Joel Mokyr Princeton University Press: 2016.
ISBN: 9780691168883

What is modern economic growth? Going by the best available measure (it might be more honest to say ‘guess’), today’s average material living standards and economic productivity levels are some 20 times what they were in the agricultural era (about 6000 BC to AD 1500). And the efficiency with which humanity uses technology and organization to transform resources into useful commodities is currently growing at 2% per year — perhaps 100 times the rate common before the Industrial Revolution… Read MOAR at Nature