Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600-1850

Abstract

Among economic historians, technological change has always held the pre-eminent position as a source of economic growth. Clearly, in the sense that man's productive capacity is always limited by the "state of the art," this imposes at least an upper limit on output. Yet in a world where technological information is at least nominally free, differences in ability to make efficient use of the state of knowledge must account for the widely disparate experience of national economies. While the relative importance of the other factors making possible the efficient use of technology is extremely difficult to isolate on a macroeconomic level, it may be more amenable to measurement on a microeconomic level. This essay presents evidence on sources of productivity change in ocean shipping from 1600 to 1850. its objective being to identify as precisely as possible those sources of productivity usually lumped into the general category of technological change. The conclusion which emerges from this study is that a decline in piracy and an improvement in economic organization account for most of the productivity change observed.