TY - CHAP
T1 - A capital intensive innovation in a capital-scarce world
T2 - Steam-threshing in nineteenth century Italy
AU - Federico, Giovanni
PY - 2003
Y1 - 2003
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=36148998706&partnerID=8YFLogxK
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:36148998706
SN - 0762310014
SN - 9780762310012
T3 - Advances in Agricultural Economic History
SP - 75
EP - 114
BT - Advances in Agricultural Economic History
PB - JAI Press
ER -