Arthur Lewis Lab Conference #3: Productivity Revolutions: Past and Future

This event will take place in-person.

With generous support from the Arthur Lewis Lab for Comparative Development, the Manchester School, and The Productivity Institute at The University of Manchester, the third Arthur Lewis Lab Conference has been organised by Guillaume Blanc, Nuno Palma, and Bart van Ark.

Event Programme:

8:30 Welcome and morning refreshments

8:55 Keynote Lecture: Management and the Wealth of Nations; John Van Reenen (LSE &MIT)

Session 1: Technology

9:45: Why Britain? The Right Place (in the Technology Space) at the Right Time? - Lukas Rosenberger (Northwestern) with Carl Hallman and Walker Hanlon

10:05: David Le Bris (Toulouse) - The Farmer, the Blue-collar, and the Monk: Understanding economic development through saturations of demands and non-homothetic productivity gains - with Elie Gray and Andre Grimaud

10:25: Eric Strobl (Bern) - The Creative-Destructive Force of Hurricanes: Evidence from Technological Adoption in Colonial Jamaican Sugar Estates - with Joel Huesler

10:45: Fabio Lavista (Pisa) - Structural change and productivity revolutions. Some hints from the Italian case, 1976-2016- with Carlo Brambilla

11:05: Break

Session 2: Institutions

11:15: John Joseph Wallis (Maryland) - Rules, Organizations, and Productivity Revolutions: A different way of thinking about Coase

11:35: Josh Martin (Bank of England) - Productivity of tax collection in the UK, 1850 to 2019 - with Beth Lawrence

11:55: Nuno Palma (Manchester) - Justices of the Peace: Legal Foundations of the Industrial Revolution - with Tim Besley, Dan Bogart, and Jonathan Chapman

12:15: 12:15: Guillaume Blanc (Manchester) - The Cultural Origins of the Demographic Transition in France

12:35: Lunch

Session 3: Long-Run

13:40: Catherine Casson (AMBS) - Productivity in Medieval England

14:00: Stephen Broadberry (Oxford) - British Productivity Performance, 1086 - 2018

14:20: Hanhui Guan (Peking) - Regional Variation of GDP per head within China, 1080-1850: implications for the great divergence debate - with Steve Broadberry

14:40: Elise Brezis (BIU) - Will Robotics lead to changes in leadership and inequality?

15:00: Break

Session 4: Slowdown

15:15: Martin Rotemberg (NYU) - Technological Stickiness: Switching Costs and Firm Entry in the Long Transistion from Water to Steam Power - with Richard Hornbeck, Sharon Hornbeck, Shanon Hsuan-Ming Hsu, and Anders Humlum

15:35: Xuxin Mao (NIESR) - A sub-sectoral analysis of productivity across countries - with Ana Rincon-Aznar and Hailey Low

15:55: Dirk Pilat (The Productivity Institute) - The Global Productivity Stagnation: What Pro-Productivity Policies Can Help to Restore Growth - with Bart van Ark and Klaas de Vries.

16:15: Oindrila De (IEG Delhi) - Innovation Efforts, Market Power and Productivity: Evidence from Manufacturing Firms in India

16:35: Florian Trouvain (Michigan) - Technology Adoption, and Inequality in a Global World

16:55: Keynote lecture: Michela Giorcelli (UCLA) - Management Interventions and Firm Performance. Lesson from WWII and the War Aftermath.

17:45 : Drinks reception at 'The Mill'

Host or Publisher The Productivity Institute