'This is an original and very well structured and informative book. Its particular interest stems from the multidimensional and detailed analysis of a set of core technologies and their uneven diffusion process in eight countries of quite different levels of development. It challenges received...

This paper examines the dynamics of technical change in the Italian locomotive industry in the period 1850-1913. From an historical point of view, this industry presents a major point of interest: it was one of the few relatively sophisticated "high-tech" sectors in which Italy, a latecomer...

The long-run evolution of per-capita income exhibits a structural break often associated with the Industrial Revolution. We follow Mokyr (2002) and embed the idea that this structural break reflects a regime switch in the evolution of technological knowledge into a dynamic framework, using Airy...

Using a large, individual-level wage data set, we examine the impact of a major technological innovation – the steam engine – on skill demand and the wage structure in the merchant shipping industry. We find that the technical change created a new demand for skilled workers, the engineers,...