Liam Brunt

Inducement Prizes and Innovation

We examine the effect of prizes on innovation using data on awards for technological development offered by the Royal Agricultural Society of England at annual competitions between 1839 and 1939. We find large effects of the prizes on competitive entry and we also detect an impact of the prizes on the quality of contemporaneous patents, especially when prize categories were set by a strict rotation scheme, thereby mitigating the potentially confounding effect that they targeted only “hot” technology sectors. Prizes encouraged competition and medals were more important than monetary awards. The boost to innovation we observe cannot be explained by the re-direction of existing inventive activity.

Property Rights and Economic Growth: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

In 1795 the British took control of the Cape colony (South Africa) from the Dutch; and in 1843 they exogenously changed the legal basis of landholding, giving more secure property rights to landholders. Since endowments and other factors were held constant, these changes offer clean tests of the effects on economic growth of colonial identity and secure property rights. The effects of both changes were immediate, positive and large. Other legal and institutional changes, such as the move to a common law system in 1827, had no such effects on economic growth.

Integration in the English wheat market 1770-1820

Cointegration analysis has been used widely to quantify market integration through price arbitrage. We show that total price variability can be decomposed into: (i) magnitude of price shocks; (ii) correlation of price shocks; (iii) between-period arbitrage. All three measures depend upon data frequency, but between-period arbitrage is most affected. We measure variation of these components across time and space using English weekly wheat price data, 1770-1820. We show that conclusions about arbitrage are sensitive to the precise form of cointegration model used; different components behave differently; and different factors – in terms of transport and information – explain behaviour of different components. Previous analyses should be interpreted with caution.

Where There's Muck, There's Brass: The Market for Manure in the Industrial Revolution

Between 1700 and 1850, English grain yields were substantially higher than those attained in other countries. It is widely believed that yields were constrained by the availability of nitrogen, and that supplies of nitrogen were effectively limited to animal dung produced on the farm. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of off-farm sources of nitrogen, such as urban and industrial waste. We show that the use of off-farm nitrogen was both widespread and intensive by 1700, contrary to the received wisdom. We further argue that there was only modest growth in the use of off-farm nitrogen up to 1850. We explain this pattern of use of off-farm nitrogen by supply and demand factors. We use a new method of estimation to show that the overall impact was to raise wheat yields by a constant 20 per cent throughout the period.

Rediscovering Risk: Country Banks as Venture Capital Firms in the First Industrial Revolution

Some English country banks were more like modem venture capital firms than modem banks in terms of legal and managerial structure, size and source of investment funding, size and nature of investments, and riskiness. This is exemplified by Praed & Co. of Truro, which was heavily engaged in financing the adoption of a risky new technology-Watt steam engines-by Cornish copper mines in the period 1775-1800. If some banks were proto-venture capital firms, rather than proto-banks, then their illiquid and relatively undiversified investment strategies are more reasonable and their bankruptcies more understandable: high-risk investments sometimes earn negative returns. The important role of banks in financing industrialization in Britain,

The Advent of the Sample Survey in the Social Sciences

It is generally thought that the sample survey was developed in the social sciences in the late 19th century. We trace its inception back to the survey of rural economy that was undertaken by Arthur Young in England in 1768. Young was aware that his survey technique was an important innovation, and he discussed the best method of data collection to ensure that the sample was representative of the population. His contemporaries, such as Davies and Eden, recognized the potential of sample surveys and soon undertook important investigations based on Youngs model. Sample surveys declined in importance during the 19th century as census data became more abundant and mathematicians formalized the theory of population statistics.

Weather Shocks and English Wheat Yields, 1690-1871

We estimate a time series model of weather shocks on English wheat yields for the early nineteenth century and use it to predict weather effects on yield levels from 1697 to 1871. This reveals that yields in the 1690s were depressed by unusually poor weather; and those in the late 1850s were inflated by unusually good weather. This has led researchers to overestimate the underlying growth of yields over the period by perhaps 50 per cent. Correcting for this effect would largely reconcile the conflicting primal and dual estimates of productivity growth over the period.

“School’s Out for Summer, School’s Out for…”

Wrapping up the school semester offers Brunt an opportunity to reflect on the Chinese education system. Being aged 5, 7 and 8, the Brunt girls had some serious exams to sit: the bi-weekly tests of the previous five months were just a warm-up. In fact, the pressure just keeps rising through the school system until the dreaded “Gaokao” (school leaving exam). A striking aspect of Chinese education, however, is its narrow focus—mathematics, science, Chinese and English. It is definitely not designed to equip people for free thinking. If this were the price of doing better in international rankings, then it might not be a price that Western society would want to pay.

Huaguoshan and Guizhou

The mythical “fruit and flower mountain” (“Huaguoshan”) was the birthplace of the Monkey King, so Brunt takes his daughters there to visit their hero. Then on to Guizhou—the least developed province in China, and birthplace of a good friend whose family welcomes us. This offers another opportunity to see what life is like for ordinary Chinese people. They live in an entirely new city, Liupanshui, built from scratch only ten years ago; we visit them in their new apartment building, and see the house in the countryside that they left behind (where they used to draw water from a well and had no heating). It is clear why 1.5 million people per month are moving from the countryside to the city in China.

“You’re in the Army, Now”

The kindergarten children—and their families—are invited to spend a weekend at a Chinese army camp. The Brunt family enjoys Chinese team building, stir-frying over a campfire and patriotic history lessons at the Air Force and Tank Museums. They also get an insight into the Chinese military–industrial complex. The Chinese army is expected to be largely self-financing because its expenditures vastly exceed its central government budget. Hence, it owns farms, factories and communications companies. It is a very different attitude to running a military, compared to the West, and may have important implications for the rest of the world. For example, should users of Huawei phones—the world’s third largest producer—be worried about its ties to the Chinese military?