Why did the West grow so rapidly over the last 500 years, while much of therest of the world stagnated? And why several countries, especially in East Asia, grown so fast over the last half-century? If we can understand these growth experiences, and identify the forces which made them possible,...

The records of a New York savings bank founded by Irish immigrants in 1850are used to shed light o immigrant savings patterns and the early history of savings banks. The analysis of the occupations and adresses of individual account holders reveals a very broad cross-section of the New York...

Our goal here is to offer a better understanding of why workhouse mortality was as high as it was, how it varied across Ireland, and how it affected different groups in the population such as women or children.

Why is modern society capable of cumulative innovation? In A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy, Joel Mokyr persuasively argues that sustained technological progress stemmed from a change in cultural beliefs. The change occurred gradually during the seventeenth and eighteenth...

The process of modern growth is different from the kind of growth experienced in Europe and the Orient before 1800 in that it is sustained. Whereas in the premodern past, growth spurts would always run into negative feedback, no such ceiling seems to have been limiting the economic expansion of...