I've been browsing through an advance copy of Joel Mokyr's new book on the British Industrial Revolution (to be published in September by Yale University Press and Penguin), The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700-1850.

Although the themes won't come as a surprise to admirers of his earlier work – The Gifts of Athena stands out  – this new book is an absolute must for those with an interest either in the historical tale or in the process of growth in general. Mokyr emphasises the role of ideas and culture and intellectual innovation, and their interaction with institutions, with politics, and with what you might call the everyday economics of factor prices and productivity increases. There is one paragraph early in The Enlightened Economy which sums this up well:

A successful economy depends on good institutions to create the right incen-
tives for commerce, finance, and innovation. Yet there is no set of institutions
that we could design as universally “optimal.” As the circumstances change,
institutions need to adapt. What matters therefore is for institutions to have the
agility to change as circumstances change. It needs not only rules that determine
how the economic game is played, it needs rules to change the rules if necessary
in a way that is as costless as possible. In other words, it needs meta-institutions
that change the institutions, and whose changes will be accepted even by those
who stand to lose from these changes. Institutions did not change just because
it was efficient for them to do so. They changed because key people’s ideas and
beliefs that supported them changed (Greif, 2005; North 2005). Much as some
economists may be suspicious of cultural beliefs underpinning economic
change, we cannot avoid facing changing ideology and institutions when dis-
cussing the eighteenth century.

He goes on to discuss the role of science in sustaining the technological and economics advances of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution could not have happened without the Enlightenment's search for understanding and development of scientific method. Individual chapters have a strong emphasis on technology, on institutions, and on specific sectors including agriculture and services – often ignored in histories of the period which tend to be preoccupied with new manufacturing technologies. There are also chapters on gender, demography and social norms. I particularly liked the latter, again a subject often overlooked in favour of discussions of easier-to-define institutions.

I haven't yet read the whole book – will have to buy a physical copy to be able to do so. But I've certainly read enough to know that this is an important contribution to our understanding of the subtle and difficult question of how we have ideas, turn them into practical applications, spread their use through society – in short, the fundamental question of economic development.