The Industrial Revolution in England was characterised by early and rapid labour release from agriculture to industry. This was facilitated by rising levels of labour productivity in agriculture which permitted labour to be released without excessive upward pressure on food prices. New...

A marked acceleration of total factor productivity (TFP) growth in U.S. manufacturing followed World War I. This development contributed substantially to the absolute and relative rise of the domestic economy's aggregate TFP residual, which is observed when the "growth accounts" for the first...

Volunteering by young adults for working in Third World countries on development projects emerged in Britain the late 1950s. Three decades later, the country’s largest volunteering sending agency, Voluntary Service Overseas, had sent more than 21,000 people abroad. The most common explanation...

The phenomenon of recurring prolonged swings in the total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate is approached in this paper by examining a particular episode in earlier twentieth century economic history. A marked acceleration of productivity growth in U.S. manufacturing occurred after World War...

This paper provides a case study of the parliamentary enclosure of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire. A collection of nearly eighty letters reveals the often-acrimonious negotiations over the draft clauses of the enclosure bill, and the extent of the concessions needed to overcome opposition to...

The rescue of persecuted minorities - such as the Jews in Nazi occupied Europe - is seen in this paper as taking place in a peculiar market. In such a market rescuers face at least two dilemmas. Firstly, they might be willing to help but be uncertain how to go about rescuing. Secondly, they...

Body weight has risen in defiance of health and appearance norms. The social epidemics of overeating and slimming were driven by market forces and the psychology of eating: restrained eating is easily disinhibited by stress. For men, the rise in body weight was associated with the decline of...

It has been argued that the additional cost of transporting ring yarn in the vertically and geographically specialised Lancashire cotton industry was sufficiently high to deter spinners from adopting rings. The absence of a transition to large scale vertically integrated plants is seen as a form...

The herringbone parlour, a mechanical milking technology, was invented in 1908, but took over 70 years to be adopted by the majority of British farmers. Among the reasons were the need to improve original designs, the need for complementary institutional changes such as management systems, new...