During Britain's industrialization, Parliament operated a forum where rights to land and resources could be reorganized. This venue enabled landholders and communities to exploit economic opportunities that could not be accommodated by the inflexible rights regime inherited from the past. In...

The British Industrial Revolution triggered a reversal in the social order of society whereby the landed elite was replaced by industrial capitalists rising from the middle classes as the economically dominant group. Many observers have linked this transformation to the contrast in values...

Europeans restricted their fertility long before the Demographic Transition. By raising the marriage age of women and ensuring that a substantial proportion remained celibate, the "European Marriage Pattern" (EMP) reduced childbirths by up to one third between the 14th and 18th century. In a...

What drives change in a society's values? From Marx to modernization theory, scholars have identified a connection between structural transformation and social change. To understand how changes in a society's dominant mode of production affect its dominant values, we examine the case of the...

Why did per capita income divergence occur so dramatically during the 19th Century, rather than at the outset of the Industrial Revolution? How were some countries able to reverse this trend during the globalization of the late 20th Century? To answer these questions, this paper develops a...

Reducing emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change will require dramatic changes in the way that energy is produced and consumed. The cost of technological changes such as alternative energy sources and improved energy efficiency will play a large role in determining the...