In honor of economic historian Joel Mokyr, other economic historians from North America, Europe, Australia, and Israel present 15 essays (most from a conference to celebrate his 65th birthday)
that consider how institutions, innovation, and industrialization have impacted the development of nations. They address the institutional foundations of well-being and their historical
evolution, including the evolution of markets, the regulatory function of the state and welfare implications of meat consumption in 19th-century New York, the financial underpinnings of the
empire of Philip II of Spain, and the relations between beliefs in the supernatural and the legal order in France between 1550 and 1700; innovation and how it contributes to economic growth,
including mergers and acquisitions in the British banking industry from 1885 to 1925, the invention of the airplane, new machine tool technologies and skilled labor during industrialization in
Britain, and economic history as a research field; the health effects of industrialization; and an essay by Mokyr on the cultural foundations of technological progress and the intellectual and
communication networks for the creation and transmission of knowledge in the 17th and 18th centuries. The final section considers issues and economic and social changes relating to the
Industrial Revolution of the 18th century and late industrialization in the 19th century, with discussion of black and Irish Civil War veterans in the unskilled labor force, skilled craftsmen
and engineers in Britain, child labor regulation in Europe, the wage gap between men and women during industrialization, and the causes of the Industrial Revolution. Annotation ©2015 Ringgold,
Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
