Klaus Desmet, Avner Greif y Stephen L. Parente han publicado Spatial Competition, Innovation and Institutions: The Industrial
Revolution and the Great Divergence Allí exploran la gran divergencia analizando la difusión tecnológica. En su abstract refieren: "Why do some countries industrialize much earlier
than others? One widely-accepted answer is that markets need to be large enough
for producers to find it profitable to bear the fixed cost of introducing
modern technologies. This insight, however, has limited explanatory power, as
illustrated by England having industrialized nearly two centuries before China.
This paper argues that a market-size-only theory is insufficient because it
ignores that many of the modern technologies associated with the Industrial
Revolution were fiercely resisted by skilled craftsmen who expected a reduction
in earnings. Once we take into account the incentives to resist by factor
suppliers' organizations such as craft guilds, we theoretically show that
industrialization no longer depends on market size, but on the degree of
spatial competition between the guilds' jurisdictions. We substantiate the
relevance of our theory for the timing of industrialization in England and
China (i) by providing historical and empirical evidence on the relation
between spatial competition, craft guilds and innovation, and (ii) by showing
that a model of our theory calibrated to historical data on spatial competition
correctly predicts the timing of industrialization in both countries. The
theory can therefore account for both the Industrial Revolution and the Great
Divergence."
Ver enlace aquí
