Thread by @dkedrosky

The Industrial Revolution was NOT caused by institutional reforms. A THREAD (and a newsletter): #econhist #EconTwitter

Acemoglu and Robinson, in *Why Nations Fail*, argue that the Glorious Revolution created "inclusive institutions" that started British industrialization. 1/4

Their claims are premised on the notion that Glorious Revolution made Parliament an open-access institution where wealth-holders could constrain the monarchy and protect their property rights.

They hold that this promoted investment and later enabled modern growth. 2/4

But that doesn't fit the facts. Parliament remained elite-dominated, there was no discontinuous change in property rights (which had been secure since the Middle Ages), and the merchants in Parliament used the body to enrich themselves. 3/4

Since institutions were continuous during the early phase of the Industrial Revolution, they cannot explain the discontinuous movement of the British economy away from the long-run pattern of Smithian growth. 4/4

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And as ever, please share and subscribe. Word of mouth is the main way that I get more eyes on this. daviskedrosky.substack.com/p/1689

Addendum: bonus points for guessing the book referenced in the title.

Things I am NOT saying:
1) That institutions don't matter to the IR—they do. But a story of one-off discontinuous changes to UK institutions doesn't fit.
2) That Britain had bad institutions—it did not. They'd been relatively good for centuries and improved gradually over time.

3) That a critique of this particular institutional explanation of the Glorious Revolution has any implications for other parts of the A&R thesis, which definitely has explanatory power in other historical cases in WNF.