eco question

ECON 5130

EXAM #3

Covered Readings

The exam will cover the following readings:

Industrious Revolution

De Vries (1994)

Voth (1998)

Do Ideas Matter?

Becker & Woessmann (2009)

Cantioni (2015)

Mokyr (201)

Industrial Revolution

Mokyr (1985) [20??]

Crafts & Harley (1992)

Temin (1997)

Standard of Living Debate

Lindert & Williamson (1983)

Mokyr (1988)

Feinstein (1998)

Horrel & Humphries (1992)*

Lyons (1989)*

Nicholas & Steckel (1991)*

Nicholas & Oxley (1993)*

Logan (2006)*

There is a significant risk that we won’t get to the items above

with a (*) before the exam. If we don’t get to it by the exam,

it won’t be on this exam.

Big Picture Questions

The following are example prompts to help get you thinking about

exam. This is NOT an exhaustive list. These are NOT the exam

questions. A good exercise is to think about what prompts you

would place on the exam if you were the professor and answer

those too. Many of them ask the same question in different

ways.

- What was the Industrious Revolution?

- Does the evidence support the existence of an Industrious

Revolution? Explain.

- What is the Weber Thesis? Does the Weber Thesis receive

empirical support? What methodological issues are inherent in

attempting to test the Weber Thesis, or any culture-based

argument?

- What is instrumental variable analysis? What methodological

problems does it attempt to solve? What are the criteria for a

valid instrument? What are the potential problems or pitfalls

with instrumental variables?

- What was the Enlightenment? How may have the Enlightenment

been important for the precocious economic development of

Europe?

- Compare and contrast the different “schools of thought” on the important issues regarding the nature of the British

Industrial Revolution.

- Was the British Industrial Revolution a discontinuity or part of a slow and continual process of change?

- Compare and contrast the traditional view and the revisionist view of the Industrial Revolution and the role of

technological change.

- Compare and contrast the weak pessimistic, strong pessimistic,

and optimistic hypotheses in the standard of living debate.

According to your reading of the evidence, which hypotheses

receives the most support? Back up your claims.

- Discuss various measures economic historians have used to

measure living standards during British Industrialization. What

are the methodological difficulties with different measures?

What are the advantages of different measures?