IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v55y1995i02p211-226_04.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How Fast and Why Did Early Capitalism Benefit the Majority?

Author

Listed:
  • Morris, Cynthia Taft

Abstract

How long did it take for early rapid capitalist transformations to benefit the majority of the population? This essay examines three presumed success cases, concluding that rapid capitalist development took at least five decades to benefit the majority. A neglected political force for success was the effectiveness of local public and quasi-public institutions in creating wide networks of transportation and other public investments responsive to changing market requirements. Economists today should pay close attention to distributional benefits and local government effectiveness before urging western brands of capitalism on countries where failures to benefit the majority threaten severe political instability.

Suggested Citation

  • Morris, Cynthia Taft, 1995. "How Fast and Why Did Early Capitalism Benefit the Majority?," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 55(2), pages 211-226, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:55:y:1995:i:02:p:211-226_04
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050700041036/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Easterly, William, 1999. "Life during growth : international evidence on quality of life and per capita income," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2110, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:55:y:1995:i:02:p:211-226_04. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.