How Sovereign Debt Accelerated the First Industrial Revolution
Could the massive wartime debt accumulated by Britain’s government in the 18th and 19th centuries have helped the country industrialize first and become the world’s leading economy? Given the customary association of debt with dissipation and ruin, this may come across as an unlikely proposition, yet this is exactly the story that Jaume Ventura and Hans-Joachim Voth have found in the historical evidence.
