Urbanization, Technological Progress, and Economic History

Abstract

It has become customary among economic historians to distinguish four different sources of economic growth (see, for example, Mokyr, 1990, for an exposition). Although these sources are interconnected in many ways and usually occur simultaneously, they are separable at least in the sense that conceivably we could observe one without the others. The four “horsemen of economic growth” are the gains from trade and specialization (also known as Smithian growth after Parker, 1984), technological change, capital accumulation, and efficiency growth due to changes in the internal allocation of resources.