A Simple Combinatorial Model of World Economic History

TL;DR

This paper presents a simple combinatorial model explaining the Industrial Revolution as a sudden technological explosion resulting from long periods of slow change, driven by the recombination of existing goods.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combinatorial framework that models technological change as recombination, explaining the abrupt onset of the Industrial Revolution.

Findings

Long periods of slow technological change precede the Industrial Revolution.

A combinatorial explosion in technology leads to rapid technological advancement.

The model predicts a high probability of sudden technological takeoff after extended quiescence.

Abstract

We use a simple combinatorial model of technological change to explain the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was a sudden large improvement in technology, which resulted in significant increases in human wealth and life spans. In our model, technological change is combining or modifying earlier goods to produce new goods. The underlying process, which has been the same for at least 200,000 years, was sure to produce a very long period of relatively slow change followed with probability one by a combinatorial explosion and sudden takeoff. Thus, in our model, after many millennia of relative quiescence in wealth and technology, a combinatorial explosion created the sudden takeoff of the Industrial Revolution.