Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : The enlightened economist / Avner Greif, Lynne Kiesling, and John V.C. Nye ; Neither feast nor famine : England before the Industrial Revolution / Cormac Ó Gráda ; Progress, useful knowledge, and the origins of the Industrial Revolution / Joel Mokyr ; Coercion and exchange : how did markets evolve? / Avner Grief ; Meat consumption in nineteenth-century New York : Quantity, distribution, and quality, or notes on the "antebellum puzzle" / Gergely Baics ; Funding empire : Risk, diversification, and the underwriting of early modern sovereign loans / Mauricio Drelichman and Hans-Joachim Voth ; Establishing a new order : The growth of the state and the decline of witch trials in France / Noel D. Johnson, Mark Koyama, and John V.C. Nye -- II. Innovation. Increasing market concentration in British banking, 1885 to 1925 / Fabio Braggion, Narly R.D. Dwarkasing, and Lyndon Moore ; The catapult of riches : The airplane as a creative macroinvention / Peter B. Meyer ; England's eighteenth-century demand for high-quality workmanship : Evidence from apprenticeship, 1710-1770 / Karine van der Beek ; A growth agenda for economic history / Rick Szostak -- III. The Industrial Revolution. Amidst poverty and prejudice : Black and Irish Civil War veterans / Hoyt Bleakley, Louis Cain, and Joseph Ferrie ; How Britain lost its competitive edge : Competence in the Second Industrial Revolution / Ralf R. Meisenzahl ; Regulating child labor : The European experience / Carolyn Tuttle and Simone A. Wegge ; Decomposing the wage gap : Within- and between-occupation gender wage gaps at a nineteenth-century textile firm / Joyce Burnette ; The context of English industrialization / Eric Jones.

The book explores how institutions, technological innovation, and knowledge shaped economic development and the Industrial Revolution. It examines the role of stable political and legal systems, the diffusion of useful knowledge, and the incentives for innovation in enabling sustained economic growth. Through historical case studies, the essays show how the interaction between social structures, markets, and technological progress drove industrialization, particularly in Europe, highlighting the critical link between institutional frameworks and economic transformation.