WHEELS OF CHANGE: Skill-biased factor endowments and industrialisation in eighteenth century England
- Date:
- 06 Apr 2018
Summary:
The important English textile centres of the eighteenth century evolved in places that had more grinding watermills hundreds of years earlier during the Domesday Survey, according to research by Joel Mokyr, Assaf Sarid and Karine van der Beek, to be presented at the Economic History Society's 2018 annual conference. Their study confirms the key role of factor endowments for industrialisation.
The main manifestation of an industrial revolution taking place in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century was the shift of textile production (that is, the spinning process) from a cottage-based manual system to a factory-based capital-intensive system, with machinery driven by waterpower and later on by steam.