In the last two decades of the XIX century Italy became an industrial country. Historians maintain that this process was affected by the action of some interest groups that pursued both state protection from competition and specific public expenditure programs. Starting from the economic...

This research explores the long-run effect of industrialization on the process of development. In contrast to conventional wisdom that views industrial development as a catalyst for economic growth, highlighting its persistent effect on economic prosperity, the study establishes that while the...

The research explores the effect of industrialization on human capital formation. Exploiting exogenous regional variations in the adoption of steam engines across France, the study establishes that in contrast to conventional wisdom that views early industrialization as a predominantly...

This paper investigates Becker, Hornung and Woessmann's recent claim that education had an important causal effect on Prussian industrialization and finds it unwarranted. The econometric analysis on which this claim is based suffers from severe problems, notably the omission of relevant...

Biographical information on a sample of renowned U.S. inventors is combined with information on the patents they received over their careers, and employed to highlight the implications of patent institutions for markets in inventions and for democratization. The United States deliberately...

The East Asian miracle was real. Prior to the 1997 economic and currency crises, Asian NICs Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan achieved remarkable annual GDP growth. In these countries the overall economic performance was significantly determined by the industrial development triggered by...

The on-going "Make in India" campaign aims at manufacturing revival. Its characteristics resemble East Asian industrial reform and growth policies based on the flying-geese model which highlights "step-by-step" changes in a country's specialisation pattern and global competitiveness accompanied...

This paper uses a historical setting to study when religion can be a barrier to the diffusion of knowledge and economic development, and through which mechanism. I focus on 19th-century Catholicism and analyze a crucial phase of modern economic growth, the Second Industrial Revolution...