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Induced Innovation and Economic Performance in Late Victorian British Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

William H. Phillips
William H. Phillips
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina 29208.
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Abstract

Previous “new” economic history research on late Victorian Britain often assumes that technology was exogenous to British entrepreneurs. Foreign innovations were available for inspection, and if they were not found suitable, there was no way to adapt new techniques to the British situation. Alternatively, one can assert that technological failure is a key issue in any study of retarded economic performance. A test for the presence of induced innovation—an endogenous theory of technological change—is applied to the British pig iron and cotton textile industries. Results are compared to other technological studies of British and American industry.

Type
Papers Presented at the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 97 - 103
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1982

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References

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