In the last two centuries, agriculture has been an outstanding, if somewhat neglected, success story. Agriculture has fed an ever-growing population with an increasing variety of products at falling prices, even as it has released a growing number of workers to the rest of the economy. This...

This paper puts forth a unified theory of growth that captures a number of relevant features of countries' transitions from stagnant, predominantly rural economies to vibrant, industrialized economies that have been overlooked by the literature. In our theory, increasing variety of consumer...

Cover page -- Halftitle page -- Title page -- Copyright page -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF FIGURES -- PREFACE -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- 1 INTRODUCTION -- The planning machine -- Bound capitalism -- The four horsemen of capitalist decline -- 2 WHEN CAPITALISM BECAME MIDDLE-AGED -- The bridges to Maddison...

Economic modernity is so closely associated with nationhood that it is impossible to imagine a modern state without an equally modern economy. Even so, most people would have difficulty defining a modern economy and its connection to nationhood. In Saving the Nation, Margherita Zanasi explores...