Lecture prof. Mokyr, awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

On Monday 25 September professor Joel Mokyr (Northwestern University) will deliver the so-called ‘Heineken Lecture’. The professor is invited by the The N.W. Posthumus Instituut, the Netherlands research institute and research school for economic and social history at the Faculty of Economics. Mokyr recently was awarded the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2006 ($ 150.000) by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Mokyr’s lecture will take place in the Aula of the Academy Building (Broerstraat 5, Groningen) from 16.00 until 17.15 hours. It is titled The market for ideas and the origins of economic growth in 18th century Europe. Admission is free.

Prize
Mokyr is the undisputed world authority in the field of economic history. The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) has awarded him the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History 2006 for 'his research into the origins of the modern industrial economy'. The Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for History has been awarded since 1990. Previous winners include Peter Gay, Mona Ozouf, Heinz Schilling and Jacques Le Goff. For more background information, see http://www.knaw.nl/heinekenprizes.

The subject
Why are some societies innovative and others not? That is the key question in the fertile and influential work of Joel Mokyr, who has published on European and world economic history. In his view, knowledge and technology play a crucial role. Starting with his first study of the industrial revolution in the Low Countries, Mokyr pioneered what is now known as 'New Economic History'. He draws from many different disciplines, ranging from demographics to cognitive psychology, and in this way offers relevant insights into the present, for example the origins of the knowledge society. Mokyr has shown that there is an unmistakeable relationship between Europe's Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and 19th centuries and the intellectual movements of the previous centuries. Without that knowledge base, the modern industrial economy would not have evolved. Mokyr also makes clear that if that knowledge base is too narrow, economic development will eventually grind to a halt.

The prizewinner
Joel Mokyr (1946) was born in Leyden, the Netherlands, but migrated to Israel at an early age and is now an American citizen. He studied economics and history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and received his doctorate at Yale in 1974 for his dissertation on the economic history of the Low Countries.
In the same year he accepted a position at Northwestern University (Illinois), where he has worked ever since. He is currently a Professor of Economics and History and, since 1994, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences.
Mokyr is an undisputed world authority in his field. He is or has been a member of the editorial boards of the leading journals of economic history and is the editor in chief of the five-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History.
Mokyr is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001. A number of his books, many of which are suitable for a wider readership, have been translated and he has received numerous awards for his publications. Mokyr is well-known for his enthusiasm, his wide-ranging outlook and his ability to inspire other researchers.

Abstract
The literature on the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century and the start of modern sustained economic growth in nineteenth century Europe has thus far paid little attention to the intellectual origins of economic change. The economic changes in the West that created the modern economic world had an ideological component that has hitherto been neglected. That component is the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Both the timing and the geographical distribution of the Enlightenment support the notion that there was a tight relation between the two. However, this raises the further question of how and why Western Europe, of all places, became a fertile ground for the progressive ideas we associate with the Enlightenment.

The cultural and intellectual potential for Enlightenment ideas existed in all societies, but only in Europe were they triumphant. To understand the origins of the victory of Enlightenment ideas in Europe, we need to examine the prior emergence of a “market for ideas” in which Europeans in some sense “sold” and “bought” intellectual innovations. While these markets operated in many ways differently from standard economic markets, thinking in terms of such markets can help us understand the rate of supply of new ideas and why and how they are selected for retention. The concept of an increasingly free market for ideas that emerged in Europe between 1500 and 1700 and its historical origins explains why and how Enlightenment ideas unfolded in Europe and why they were successful, and thus adds to the understanding of modern economic growth.