Modern economic growth started in the West in the early nineteenth century. This survey discusses the precise connection between the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of growth, and connects it to the intellectual and economic factors underlying the growth of useful knowledge. The...

This Element develops an innovative combinatorial model of technological change and tests it with 2,000 years of data from global GDP data and US patents, thus generating the observed historical pattern of technological change. This Element models the Industrial Revolution as a combinatorial...

The paper argues that Thailand's economic and social development from the late 19th century to the early 21st century presents a puzzle. For much of the period from 1870 to 1940, the country's economic growth was slow, and the economy remained agricultural, with little diversification into...

A method for analyzing productivity convergence based on frontier production functions is proposed. It is examined whether departures from the frontier - country-level inefficiencies - exhibit long-run relationships and convergence. The method is applied to 1-digit industries of 14 OECD...