Joel Mokyr

About

Joel Mokyr is the Robert H. Strotz Professor at Northwestern University, with a PhD from Yale University obtained in 1974. His research focuses on the economic history of Europe, particularly during the period 1750-1914. He specializes in understanding the economic and intellectual roots of technological progress and the growth of useful knowledge in European societies. His work explores how industrialization and economic progress have impacted economic welfare. Mokyr is a distinguished scholar, being a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Econometric Society, the Cliometric Society, the British Academy, the Italian Accademia dei Lincei, and the Dutch Royal Academy. He has served as President of the Economic History Association, editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, and co-editor of the Journal of Economic History. Currently, he is a co-editor of the Princeton University Press Economic History of the World series. Mokyr has received several prestigious awards, including the 2006 Heineken Award for History and the 2015 Balzan International Prize for economic history. His most recent book, 'A Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy,' was published in 2016. He has supervised over forty doctoral dissertations in Economics and History.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economy
• Economic growth
• Economics
• Economic history
• Market economy
• Engineering
• Management
• Economic geography
• Geography

Selected publications

• The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution

  Journal of Political Economy · 2022 · 72 citations

  Although there are many competing explanations for the Industrial Revolution, there has been no effort to evaluate them econometrically. This paper analyzes how the very different patterns of growth across the counties of England between the 1760s and 1830s can be explained by a wide range of potential variables. We find that industrialization occurred in areas that began with low wages but high mechanical skills, whereas other variables, such as literacy, banks, and proximity to coal, have litt…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Wheels of Change: Technology Adoption, Millwrights and the Persistence in Britain'S Industrialisation

  The Economic Journal · 2022 · 25 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human capital and industrialisation. We argue that mechanical skills and competence were a main determinant of the location of industry on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. It concentrates on the case of millwrights, eighteenth-century specialists in advanced carpentry and hydraulic machinery. Millwrights were a key part of the upper tail of the distribution of mechanical abilities. Their emergenc…

  PublisherDOI

• Social organizations and political institutions: why China and Europe diverged

  Economica · 2023-12-27 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  Abstract This paper discusses the historical and social origins of the bifurcation in the political institutions of China and Western Europe. An important factor, recognized in the literature, is that China centralized state institutions very early on, while Europe remained politically fragmented for much longer. These initial differences, however, were amplified by the different social organizations (clans in China, corporate structures in Europe) that spread in these two societies at the turn…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Wheels of Change: Technology Adoption, Millwrights, and the Persistence in Britain's Industrialization

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2021-11-29 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  This paper examines the effect of the early adoption of technology on the evolution of human<br> capital and industrialization. We argue that mechanical skills and competence were a main<br> determinant of the location of industry on the eve of the Industrial Revolution. It concentrates on<br> the case of millwrights, eighteenth century specialists in advanced carpentry and hydraulic<br> machinery. Millwrights were a key part of the upper-tail of the distribution of mechanical<br> abilities. The…

  PublisherDOI

• Institutions, ideas and economic change: some reflections on Geoffrey Hodgson's ‘Culture and Institutions’

  Journal of Institutional Economics · 2021-08-24 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Professor Hodgson in his review of my A Culture of Growth (Princeton University Press, 2016) raises a number of important issues. One of them is the usefulness of the concept of a ‘market for ideas’ as an analytical tool in discussing the way cultural change affects economic change. Even though there is no price mechanism that clears the market, many basic components of the economic analysis of markets carry through and enriched by evolutionary concepts. A second question is the importa…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hans‐Joachim Voth

  49 shared

• Gavin Wright

  Stanford University

  28 shared

• Nathan Rosenberg

  26 shared

• James D. Klein

  25 shared

• Glen G. Cain

  25 shared

• Marjorie B. McElroy

  25 shared

• Eli Seidman

  25 shared

• Saul H. Hymans

  25 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1978

• M.A., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1975

• B.A., Economics

  University of California, Los Angeles

  1973

Awards & honors

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Fellow of the Econometric Society
• Fellow of the Cliometric Society
• Fellow of the British Academy
• Fellow of the Italian Accademia dei Lincei