A Nobel Prize for explaining when technology leads to growth
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If you graph the history of economic growth, it looks a lot like a hockey stick laid on the ground with its blade sticking up. That is, economic growth was pretty flat for millennia, and then, around 1800, it points upward toward the sky.
It's no secret that this inflection point — where the stick's handle and blade meet — was the Industrial Revolution. That was a crucial turning point in the history of humankind, when we left economic stagnation behind and began seeing monumental improvements in the economy and our standard of living.
But why around 1800? Why did economic growth continue propelling upward after that point?
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