Brad DeLong & Sean Kenny: "Slouching Towards Utopia" on the Economic History Podcast

49:29: How did I get into this business? Taking a course from Barry Eichengreen when I was an undergraduate impressed me that economic history was a lot more interesting than mainstream economics...

49:29: How did I get into this business? Taking a course from Barry Eichengreen when I was an undergraduate impressed me that economic history was a lot more interesting than mainstream economics—which seemed to rest on an appallingly narrow theoretical and a relatively narrow—because present-economy only—empirical base. You had a much longer baseline with economic history…

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Podcast: <https://overcast.fm/+bbwlDPlr8>

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Sean Kenny: ‘In this episode, we meet Prof. Bradford DeLong to discuss his recent book Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century. We cover the rate of technological change prior to the industrial revolution. Before 1500, "the amount of technological change they got in a century, we get in two and a half years"!  We also look at some prerequisites for industrialisation and discuss how the second industrial revolution was the game-changer in terms of long run living standards. After discussing the European turnaround after the Marshall Plan, we finish in the post-war era by looking at "Pacific Rim" development and how it differed from previous modern economic growth episodes… <https://overcast.fm/+bbwlDPlr8>