My Encyclopedia Entry on Joel Mokyr
Economic History
I was honored to be asked to write Joel Mokyr’s encyclopedia entry for the Library of Economics and Liberty by David Henderson. The full entry is here. I provide a taster below:
With his breakthrough 1990 book, The Lever of Riches, Mokyr began the research on innovation that would culminate in his Nobel Prize. The Lever of Riches is a highly accessible history of technology from antiquity through the Second Industrial Revolution (1850-1914.) In it Mokyr linked the history of technology to the fundamental issue in economic history: the origins of sustained economic growth.
As well as providing a detailed narrative history of invention, this book also introduced important concepts and ideas to the history of innovation. Mokyr distinguished between macro-inventions and micro-inventions. By the former, he meant what we often call general purpose technologies such as the printing press or the internet. Macro-inventions can be truly transformative but it typically takes many decades for their full impact to be felt. Moreover, macro-inventions are potentially sterile unless complemented by a stream of micro-inventions: small improvements and cost savings that improve the initial technology and allow it to be disseminated on a broad basis. The macro-invention of the internal combustion engine and the automobile required many complementary improvements (for example, rubber tires) to ultimately bring about the transformation in transportation that took place by the early 20th century.
Mokyr’s insight was that a lone genius inventor, such as a Leonardo da Vinci, could not on his own have much impact on the history of technology and growth. Many of da Vinci’s designs were feasible but, lacking either complementary micro-inventions or craftsmen and mechanics capable of implementing his ideas, they were neglected by his contemporaries. This emphasis on innovation as a collective rather than individual achievement would become an important theme in Mokyr’s later work.
Read more on the Library of Economics and Liberty.