TY  - JOUR
AU  - Clark, Gregory
AU  - Feenstra, Robert
TI  - Technology in the Great Divergence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8596
PY  - 2001
Y2  - November 2001
DO  - 10.3386/w8596
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8596
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8596.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Gregory Clark
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616
E-Mail: gclark@ucdavis.edu

Robert C. Feenstra
Department of Economics
University of California, Davis
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA  95616
Tel: 530/752-7022
Fax: 530/752-9382
E-Mail: rcfeenstra@ucdavis.edu
M1  - published as Gregory Clark, Robert C. Feenstra. "Technology in the Great Divergence," in Michael D. Bordo, Alan M. Taylor and Jeffrey G. Williamson, editors, "Globalization in Historical Perspective" University of Chicago Press (2003)

AB  - In this paper, we examine the changes in per-capita income and productivity from 1700 to modern times, and show four things: (1) that incomes per capita diverged more around the world after 1800 than before; (2) that the source of this divergence was increasing differences in the efficiency of economies; (3) that these differences in efficiency were not due to problems of poor countries in getting access to the new technologies of the Industrial Revolution; (4) that the pattern of trade from the late nineteenth century between the poor and the rich economies suggests that the problem of the poor economies was peculiarly a problem of employing labor effectively.  This continues to be true today.
ER  -