A capital intensive innovation in a capital-scarce world: Steam-threshing in nineteenth century Italy
Advances in Agricultural Economic History
ISBN: 978-0-76231-001-2, eISBN: 978-1-84950-199-6
Publication date: 6 March 2003
Abstract
The Italian agriculture in the 19th century enjoyed a quite poor reputation among historians, for its innovative record. This article deals with a possible counterexample, the wide diffusion of steam threshing since the 1870s. It was a highly capital-intensive machine, and thus its success seems to contrast with the scarcity of capital, which plagued the Italian agriculture. Indeed, the pattern of diffusion in time and space was influenced by the cost of capital, but the constraint was eased by outsourcing. Steam-threshers were owned by specialised entrepreneurs and rented to farmers and landowners. This successful institutional arrangement casts a lot of doubt on the negative effects of the alleged institutional rigidity on technical change.
Citation
Federico, G. (2003), "A capital intensive innovation in a capital-scarce world: Steam-threshing in nineteenth century Italy", Advances in Agricultural Economic History (Advances in Agricultural Economic History, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 75-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1569-4933(03)02015-3
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2003, Emerald Group Publishing Limited