Intellectuals and the rise of the modern economy

Well-educated elites enabled scientific and technological creativity during the Industrial Revolution For many decades, economists dismissed culture as irrelevant to most questions in economic growth. However, in the past decade they have rediscovered its importance in the emergence of the Great Enr...

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Published inScience (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 349; no. 6244; pp. 141 - 142
Main Author Mokyr, Joel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Washington The American Association for the Advancement of Science 10.07.2015
Subjects
Culture
Economic conditions
Economic development
Economic growth
Economics
Emergence
Enrichment
Income
Intellectuals
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Summary:Well-educated elites enabled scientific and technological creativity during the Industrial Revolution For many decades, economists dismissed culture as irrelevant to most questions in economic growth. However, in the past decade they have rediscovered its importance in the emergence of the Great Enrichment (the rapid and unprecedented process of economic growth since 1850) ( 1 – 3 ). In retrospect, this development seems inevitable. Once it was accepted that institutions are a powerful factor in explaining differences in national per-capita income today ( 4 ), culture—in the sense of the beliefs and values on which institutions were founded—could not be far behind. In a recent paper, Squicciarini and Voigtländer ( 5 ) provide further support for this idea by showing how culture affected the rise of the modern economy.
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ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aac6520