Britain’s breakthrough to modern growth came not from a single institutional quirk but from scaled learning‑by‑experiment — iterative technical and commercial trials (notably applying steam to transport in the 1820s) that unlocked compounding growth. Treating national take‑offs as an accumulated experimental process shifts emphasis from static institutions to adaptive, cumulative trial‑and‑error capacity.
— If correct, development policy should prioritize systems that enable rapid, repeated experimentation (knowledge diffusion, transport trials, proto‑markets) rather than looking only for institutional 'models' to copy.
Arnold Kling
2026.01.05
90% relevant
Lorenzo Warby’s summary — the three E’s: experimentation, evaluation, evolution — is the same explanatory mechanism in the existing idea that Britain’s industrial breakthrough came from shifting at scale to experiment‑driven learning; the article directly quotes Warby emphasizing commercial motivation for experimentation.
Lorenzo Warby
2025.12.29
100% relevant
The article’s core claim: Britain became the first country to do learning‑by‑experiment at scale, with steam power applied to transport (steamships and railways in the 1820s) as the catalytic application.
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