Virginia’s recent New York Times column includes an interview with my friend and mentor Joel Mokyr, who recently edited the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, which was published last fall. It’s a masterful work, with over 900 entries (complete with references) on a vast array of topics. For example, I wrote three entries for the encyclopedia: the history of energy regulation, contract enforcement through history, and Adam Smith.
Virginia’s column highlights the themes that emerge from taking such an extensive look at economic history:
Some consistent themes emerge from the many and varied entries. One is the importance of technological innovation in raising living standards.
Consider cotton, an expensive and relatively unimportant textile until the mid-18th century, when spinning became mechanized. Before that innovation, an Indian hand spinner took 50,000 hours – the equivalent of five years and nine months – to spin 100 pounds of cotton. After the invention of the hand-operated cotton mule spinning machine in the 1760’s, that time dropped to 300 hours. With the mule, human fingers no longer had to spin the threads, thread could be spun on many bobbins at the same time, and the strength of the thread improved significantly. After 1825, when the self-acting mule spinner automated the process, spinning 100 pounds of cotton took 135 hours. Cotton became a cheap and common cloth, and cotton production a major industry. …
Another theme is the importance of legal and social institutions, which evolved differently depending on circumstances. …
Despite all the differences across time and space, Professor Mokyr says: “There are certain unifying themes that you see everywhere. People have to make a living. People would rather have more than to have less. On the whole, they don’t behave stupidly. They do as well as they can under the circumstances. The variation is in the circumstances, in the richness and diversity of human economic institutions that have emerged over time.”