Intro -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Divergence, Convergence, and the French Path to Industrial Development after 1750 -- 2 A Brave New World of Work: The Reform of the Corporations and the Lettres-Patentes of May 1779 -- 3 Foreign Policy as Industrial Policy: The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786...

Addressing the question of why the Industrial Revolution occurred first in England, Rick Szostak demonstrates the crucial role played by the development of a nation-wide network of land and water transport. He rejects revisionist arguments that downplay the significance of transportation to the...

Industrialization experiences differ significantly across countries. We use a bench-mark model of structural change to shed light on the sources of this heterogeneity and, in particular, the phenomenon of premature deindustrialization. Our analysis leads to three key findings. First, benchmark...