Joel Mokyr | |
---|---|
Born | |
Nationality | Israeli American |
Spouse | Margalit Mokyr |
Children | 2 [1] |
Awards | Heineken Award for History (2006) Balzan Prize (2015) |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Yale University (MPhil, PhD) Hebrew University of Jerusalem (BA) |
Doctoral advisor | William N. Parker John C. H. Fei |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Economic history |
Institutions | Northwestern University |
Doctoral students | Avner Greif [2] |
Main interests | Economic history of Europe |
Influenced | Cormac ÓGráda [3] |
Joel Mokyr (born 26 July 1946) is a Dutch-born American-Israeli economic historian who has served as a professor of economics and history and as the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University since 1994. [4] Since 2001,he has also served as the Sackler Professorial Fellow at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at Tel Aviv University. [4]
Mokyr was born in Leiden in 1946,into a family of Dutch Jews who had survived the Holocaust. [5] His father,a civil servant,died of cancer when Mokyr was one year old,and so he was raised by his mother in Haifa,Israel. [5] He received a BA in economics and history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1968. [4] He received an MPhil in economics from Yale University in 1972,and a PhD in economics from Yale in 1974,writing a dissertation titled Industrial Growth and Stagnation in the Low Countries,1800-1850 under the supervision of William N. Parker,Lloyd G. Reynolds,and John C.H. Fei. [6]
Mokyr was an acting instructor at Yale University between 1972 and 1973,and became an assistant professor at Northwestern University in 1974,where he has remained ever since. [5] Since then,he has chair or co-chaired over 50 doctoral student theses. [7] He has been the editor-in-chief of the Princeton Economic History of the Western World (a book series published by Princeton University Press) since 1993,and was a co-editor of the Journal of Economic History from 1994 to 1998. [4] He was President of the Economic History Association from 2002 to 2003. [4]
Mokyr was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1996,and was elected a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2011. [4] [8] [9] He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001,whose biennial Heineken Award for History he received in 2006. [10] [11] He won the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history. [12]
Mokyr posits that the Industrial Revolution was the result of culture and institutions. [13] He argues that the root of modernity is in "the emergence of a belief in the usefulness of progress",and that "it was a turning point when intellectuals started to conceive of knowledge as cumulative". [14]
Mokyr furthermore argues that political fragmentation (the presence of a large number of European states) made it possible for heterodox ideas to thrive,as entrepreneurs,innovators,ideologues,and heretics could easily flee to a neighbouring state in the event that the one state would try to suppress their ideas and activities. This is what set Europe apart from the technologically advanced,large unitary empires such as China and India. China had both a printing press and movable type,and India had similar levels of scientific and technological achievement as Europe in 1700,yet the Industrial Revolution would occur in Europe,not China or India. In Europe,political fragmentation was coupled with an "integrated market for ideas" where Europe's intellectuals used the lingua franca of Latin,had a shared intellectual basis in Europe's classical heritage and the pan-European institution of the Republic of Letters. [15]
Mokyr presents his explanations for the Industrial Revolution in the 2016 book A Culture of Growth:The Origins of the Modern Economy. The book has received positive reviews. Deirdre McCloskey described it as a "brilliant book... It’s long,but consistently interesting,even witty. It sustains interest right down to page 337... The book is not beach reading. But you will finish it impressively learned about how we got to where we are in the modern world." [16] In her review,McCloskey furthermore lauded Mokyr as a "Nobel-worthy economic scientist". [16]
In a review published in Nature ,Brad DeLong found that while he favored other explanations for the Industrial Revolution,"I would not be greatly surprised if I were wrong,and Mokyr's brief...turned out to be the most broadly correct analysis...A Culture of Growth is certainly making me rethink." [17]
Cambridge economic historian Victoria Bateman wrote,"In pointing to growth-boosting factors that go beyond either the state or the market,Mokyr's book is very welcome. It could also feed into discussions about the scientific community post-Brexit. By reviving the focus on culture it will,however,prove controversial,particularly among economists." [18] An article in The Economist pointed out that a fine definitional distinction had to be considered between “culture as ideas,socially learned”and “culture as inheritance transmitted genetically”. [19] The book has also been reviewed favorably by Diane Coyle, [20] Peer Vries, [21] Mark Koyama, [22] Enrico Spolaore, [23] and The Economist . [24] Geoffrey Hodgson criticized the book for placing "too much explanatory weight" on "too few extraordinary people." [25]
Mokyr outlined three reasons why societies resist new technologies:
"These three motives often merge and create powerful forces that use political power and persuasion to thwart innovations. As a result,technological progress does not follow a linear and neat trajectory. It is,as social constructionists have been trying to tell us for decades,a profoundly political process." [26]
The Industrial Revolution,sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution,was a period of global transition of the human economy towards more widespread,efficient and stable manufacturing processes that succeeded the Agricultural Revolution. Beginning in Great Britain,the Industrial Revolution spread to continental Europe and the United States,from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines;new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes;the increasing use of water power and steam power;the development of machine tools;and the rise of the mechanised factory system. Output greatly increased,and the result was an unprecedented rise in population and the rate of population growth. The textile industry was the first to use modern production methods,and textiles became the dominant industry in terms of employment,value of output,and capital invested.
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The Wealth and Poverty of Nations:Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor is a 1998 book by historian and economist David Landes (1924–2013). He attempted to explain why some countries and regions experienced near miraculous periods of explosive growth while the rest of the world stagnated. The book compared the long-term economic histories of different regions,specifically Europe,United States,Japan,China,the Arab world,and Latin America. In addition to analyzing economic and cliometric figures,he credited intangible assets,such as culture and enterprise,to explain economic success or failure.
The European Miracle:Environments,Economies and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia is a book written by Eric Jones in 1981 to refer to the sudden rise of Europe during the Late Middle Ages. Ahead of the Islamic and Chinese civilizations,Europe steadily rose since the early modern period to a complete domination of world trade and politics that remained unchallenged until the early 20th century.
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An economy is an area of the production,distribution and trade,as well as consumption of goods and services. In general,it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices,discourses,and material expressions associated with the production,use,and management of resources. A given economy is a set of processes that involves its culture,values,education,technological evolution,history,social organization,political structure,legal systems,and natural resources as main factors. These factors give context,content,and set the conditions and parameters in which an economy functions. In other words,the economic domain is a social domain of interrelated human practices and transactions that does not stand alone.
The Great Divergence or European miracle is the socioeconomic shift in which the Western world overcame pre-modern growth constraints and emerged during the 19th century as the most powerful and wealthy world civilizations,eclipsing previously dominant or comparable civilizations from the Middle East and Asia such as Qing China,Mughal India,the Ottoman Empire,Safavid Iran,and Tokugawa Japan,among others.
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