“virtually the entire improvement in output per worker in Britain in the first century of the Industrial Revolution was due to improvement in productivity. It is likely that most of this productivity advance was embodied in capital.” — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“A GPT is seen as an epoch-defining technology which spreads through many industries, allowing costs to fall and, equivalently, productivity to increase. Bresnahan and Trajtenberg argue that a GPT is characterized by (1) pervasiveness – it spreads to most industries,… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“Economic growth continued by means of a succession of new products which found growing and ultimately massive demand. Some of the new products were goods, some were services, most involved new technologies but it was not the novel technologies which made the difference as much as the creation of new products which satisfied a previously unmet, or even unknown, consumer… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share
“Sustained growth at 2% a year changes lives. An increase at 2% a year for 150 years increases average incomes by a factor of 16.” — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“England achieved the breakthrough to growth. England’s growth followed from agricultural advances which increased incomes sufficiently that people started to demand more manufactured goods.” — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“There had previously, such as in Rome and the Netherlands, been growth over one or two centuries but this earlier growth was based on… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“Economic growth took place at the product and industry level; growth was driven by demand and enabled by supply expansion.” — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“growth processes operate at the market level, not the economy-wide level. This requires us to look at growth industry by industry.” — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“The result was introduction and adoption of a sequence of new products. These new products started off small but, tapping the huge potential markets… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“At the industry level this process went, for example, from cotton, tobacco and wheat through railroads and automobiles, household appliances and electrical goods, to… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“After the 1950s the leading causes of death became heart diseases, cancers and strokes, often known as “lifestyle diseases”. These have proved more difficult… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
“The development of information technology has taken place through a sequence of innovations, one building on another. Most of these innovations did not occur through “blue sky” research, they occurred as people were searching for ways to break through a constraint in existing ways of doing things. The innovations were demand-driven – they provided solutions to pressing practical problems. The… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share
“Woolens were fundamentally different from cottons – advances in cotton processing made cotton goods accessible to everyone, creating a new market whereas advances in wool processing slightly reduced the price of an already established product. This highlights the importance of demand in industrial growth. Cotton and woolens each experienced radical innovation in processing technology; each was transformed from a cottage… — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share
“Within this stable and secure environment people had the ability and the incentive to pursue their own economic interests.” — Edward A. Hudson Copy Share Image
