Ambitiously-subtitled "A Brief Economic History of the World," UC-Davis economist Gregory Clark really tries to do three things in A Farewell to Alms.
First, he attempts to define economic conditions around the world prior to the Industrial Revolution, asserting that living conditions in different countries were largely equal and consonant with the vision of physical limits to economic growth propounded by Thomas Malthus. This is a difficult problem of inference from spotty and inconsistent data, and is typified by keyhole comparisons across centuries and civilizations.
Second, Clark explores the causes of the Industrial Revolution in England and its pattern of diffusion, albeit somewhat less convincingly than the previous exploration of Malthusian economies. Taking a stab at both the where and the when of the escape from the Malthusian trap is admittedly a high bar to try to clear.
Third, the narrative searches for some explanation of the pronounced divergence in growth rates and material living standards since the Industrial Revolution that has opened a gap between developed and developing countries. Explanations focus on the relative intensities of labor and capital usage in similar industries, notably textiles. Despite more and better data, the endogeneity of growth is a difficult empirical reality.
One the whole, the book is very detailed as the weight of academic evidence on these issues is meticulously brought to bear, yet the treatment is somewhat lighter than a standard academic tome. The result is an intermediate pace that is noticeably more formal than much of the popular economics literature that seeks to "explain" globalization. For anyone accustomed to reading academic work, it moves along quite nicely.
While some gaps must necessarily appear in a book with such a broad-ranging and ambitious objective, this volume makes a reasonable pass at presenting the logic of paradigmatic economic models as applied by economic historians and scholars of institutional change and growth to the causes and results of industrialization.
