Primary reading
Crafts, N (2004), The economic impact of ICT: a perspective from the age of steam, The Esmée Fairbairn Lecture delivered at Lancaster University on November 18
Discussion questions
- What key characteristics do the economic impact of steam in the 19th century and ICT in more recent decades appear to share, according to Crafts?
- Explain the trends evident in the cost and relative significance of steam power over the 18th and 19th centuries [see table 1a, 1b, 2]
- Explain the concept of ‘social saving’ in relation to railways. Why was the (private) profitability of rail companies “solid” rather than “spectacular”?
- What were the wider economic effects on communication and transport that steam power* brought over the 19th century?
(* note: not just rail)
Background reading
Allen, R (2009), Engels’ pause: Technical change, capital accumulation, and inequality in the British industrial revolution, Explorations in Economic History, v46 pp418-435
Bogart, D, Shaw-Taylor, L and You, Xuesheng (2018), The development of the railway network in Britain 1825-1911, in Shaw-Taylor, L et al (eds), The Online Historical Atlas of Transport, Urbanization and Economic Development in England and Wales c.1680-1911, Cambridge Cultural and Historical Geography thematic research group.
Crafts, N (2003), Steam as General Purpose Technology: A growth accounting perspective, LSE Working Paper No. 75/03, May
Crafts, N, Mills, T and Mulatu, A (2005), Total Factor Productivity Growth On Britain’s Railways, 1852-1912: A Reappraisal Of The Evidence, LSE Working Paper No. 07/05, Feb
Fernihough, A and O’Rourke, K (2014), Coal and the European industrial revolution, University of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economic and Social History, Number 124, January
Kelly, M, Mokyr, J and O Gráda (2013), Precocious Albion: a new interpretation of the British industrial revolution, UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series,WP13/11, September