Accounting for breakout in Britain: The Industrial Revolution through a Malthusian lens

Karol Borowiecki and Alexander Tepper

No 639, Staff Reports from Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Abstract: This paper develops a simple dynamic model to examine the breakout from a Malthusian economy to a modern growth regime. It identifies several factors that determine the fastest rate at which the population can grow without engendering declining living standards; this is termed maximum sustainable population growth. We then apply the framework to Britain and find a dramatic increase in sustainable population growth at the time of the Industrial Revolution, well before the beginning of modern levels of income growth. The main contributions to the British breakout were technological improvements and structural change away from agricultural production, while coal, capital, and trade played a minor role.

Keywords: Industrial Revolution; Malthusian dynamics; maximum sustainable population growth; development; demographics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 N33 O1 O41 O52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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Related works:
Journal Article: Accounting for breakout in Britain: The industrial revolution through a Malthusian lens (2015)
Working Paper: Accounting for Breakout in Britain: The Industrial Revolution through a Malthusian Lens (2013)
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