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The Compound Marine Steam Engine: A Study in the Relationship Between Technological Change and Economic Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Ramon Knauerhase
Affiliation:
The University of Connecticut

Extract

One of the most important problems in the study of economic development is the role of technological change in the growth process. My dissertation is an analysis of some of the major variables which influenced the timing of the invention, adoption, and diffusion of the compound marine steam engine. The problem was divided into three parts: (1) all those variables pertaining directly to the invention of the engine, and the very first effects on the cost structure of the steamship industry; (2) the role of the compound marine steam engine in the growth of the German merchant fleet, 1872–1887, with special emphasis on the diffusion of the invention and its productivity effects; and (3) the effect of the compound steam engine on the sailing ship component of the German merchant fleet.

Type
Obstacles to Economic Growth: Papers presented at the Twenty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1967

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References

1 Douglass, C. North, “Ocean Freight Rates and Economic Development 1750–1913,” The Journal Of Economic History, XVIII (1958), 549;Google ScholarNorth, Douglass C., Growth and Welfare in the American Past (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966), p. 110Google Scholar.