Robin Neill

The technological and institutional context of Cold War growth theory

Between 1928 and 1968, a common information environment in the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States with respect to the role of industrial capital in the economy produced theories of economic growth in all three countries. Emerging from different stages of development and different institutional circumstances in each country, the content of the theory of growth was different in each country. The different stages of development were defined by industrial structure and levels of capital accumulation, not by technological sophistication. In the 1920s and 1930s, all three countries experienced the obsolescence of the steam locomotive and the telegraph, and the emergence of new economic activities related to the internal combustion engine, electricity, radio and the telephone. With respect to technology, as such, there was a fairly common information environment. Differences lay in institutions, rates of investment, and levels of accumulation.

A History of Canadian Economic Thought

In A History of Canadian Economic Thought, Robin Neill relates the evolution of economic theory in Canada to the particular geographical and political features of the country. Whilst there were distinctively Canadian economic discourses in nineteenth-century Ontario and early twentieth-century Quebec, Neill argues that these have now been absorbed into the broader North American mainstream. He also examines the nature and importance of the staple theory controversy and its appositeness for the Canadian case. With full accounts of the work of major Canadian economists including John Rae, H.A. Innis and Harry Johnson, A History of Canadian Economic Thought is the first definitive treatment of the subject for 30 years.