Bahrain and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The launch of the Bahrain FinTech Bay in 2018 was a significant step for Bahrain toward becoming a technology and innovation hub. It continues to develop its infrastructure to enable the developments using Fourth Industrial Revolutionrelevant technology while updating the corporate governance framework in an attempt to curtail investor uncertainty and exposure in the region. Bahrain differentiates itself from its larger neighbors by highlighting its well-trained population and low cost of living and running a business. This report shows that these factors, combined with an innovative regulatory environment, attract a more diversified pool of foreign investors, especially venture capital and other alternative financial investors in sectors such as information and technology or tourism. However, the recent emphasis on startups and technology brings challenges that could threaten the resilience of the new Bahraini economic model. First, most of the firms created have fewer than 10 employees, while Bahrain needs more medium sized companies to reach its economic goals. Second, the size of Bahrain’s labor market will not be able to accommodate the increasing demand for highly skilled workers. Third, the transition to a digitalized economy and its new requirements can be costly for existing firms, especially the smaller ones, which are the majority. Moving forward, these challenges could be alleviated by: - Helping micro firms grow. - Removing the remaining obstacles in hiring foreign workers in sectors where the qualified local labor supply is weak. - Ensuring that wages in the private sector are competitive. - Educating smaller firms on existing services that can help them transition to the digitalization of the economy. Finally, Bahrain’s ambition to become a technology, innovation, and talent hub could play a significant role in the region if the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were to strengthen their economic coordination

Bahrain and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

The launch of the Bahrain FinTech Bay in 2018 was a significant step for Bahrain toward becoming a technology and innovation hub. It continues to develop its infrastructure to enable the developments using Fourth Industrial Revolutionrelevant technology while updating the corporate governance framework in an attempt to curtail investor uncertainty and exposure in the region. Bahrain differentiates itself from its larger neighbors by highlighting its well-trained population and low cost of living and running a business. This report shows that these factors, combined with an innovative regulatory environment, attract a more diversified pool of foreign investors, especially venture capital and other alternative financial investors in sectors such as information and technology or tourism. However, the recent emphasis on startups and technology brings challenges that could threaten the resilience of the new Bahraini economic model. First, most of the firms created have fewer than 10 employees, while Bahrain needs more medium sized companies to reach its economic goals. Second, the size of Bahrain’s labor market will not be able to accommodate the increasing demand for highly skilled workers. Third, the transition to a digitalized economy and its new requirements can be costly for existing firms, especially the smaller ones, which are the majority. Moving forward, these challenges could be alleviated by: - Helping micro firms grow. - Removing the remaining obstacles in hiring foreign workers in sectors where the qualified local labor supply is weak. - Ensuring that wages in the private sector are competitive. - Educating smaller firms on existing services that can help them transition to the digitalization of the economy. Finally, Bahrain’s ambition to become a technology, innovation, and talent hub could play a significant role in the region if the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were to strengthen their economic coordination

3. The Second Industrial Revolution

There is abundant evidence for the opinion that after about 1850 the Industrial Revolution entered upon a new phase in its development. Inventions occurred at a more rapid pace than ever before in history. (Between 1850 and 1914 there were more than fifty times as many patents issued in the Unites States as during the preceding sixty years.) Increasingly these inventions were the work of scientists and engineers working in the research laboratory rather than of self-taught craftsmen, as had often been the case in the eighteenth century. [excerpt

The Third Industrial Revolution

The author examines periods of rapid technological change for coincidences of widening inequality and slowing productivity growth. He contends that while the introduction of technologies offers profits to investors and premiums for skilled workers, in the long run the rising tide of technological change lifts everybody's boat.Technology ; Productivity ; Income distribution

Factor prices and productivity growth during the British Industrial Revolution

This paper presents new estimates of total factor productivity growth in Britain for the period 1770–1860. We use the dual technique and argue that the estimates we derive from factor prices are of similar quality to quantity-based calculations. Our results provide further evidence, calculated on the basis of an independent set of sources, that productivity growth during the British Industrial Revolution was relatively slow. The Crafts–Harley view of the Industrial Revolution is thus reinforced. Our preferred estimates suggest a modest acceleration after 1800.British industrial revolution, productivity growth, dual measurement of productivity

Credit rationing and crowding out during the Industrial Revolution: Evidence from Hoare's Bank, 1702-1862

Crowding-out during the British Industrial Revolution has long been one of the leading explanations for slow growth during the Industrial Revolution, but little empirical evidence exists to support it. We argue that examinations of interest rates are fundamentally misguided, and that the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century private loan market balanced through quantity rationing. Using a unique set of observations on lending volume at a London goldsmith bank, Hoare’s, we document the impact of wartime financing on private credit markets. We conclude that there is considerable evidence that government borrowing, especially during wartime, crowded out private credit.Credit rationing, Napoleonic wars, Industrial Revolution, technological change, crowding out

Perspectives of Integrated “Next Industrial Revolution” Clusters in Poland and Siberia

Rozdział z: Functioning of the Local Production Systems in Central and Eastern European Countries and Siberia. Case Studies and Comparative Studies, ed. Mariusz E. Sokołowicz.The paper presents the mapping of potential next industrial revolution clusters in Poland and Siberia. Deindustrialization of the cities and struggles with its consequences are one of the fundamental economic problems in current global economy. Some hope to find an answer to that problem is associated with the idea of next industrial revolution and reindustrialization initiatives. In the paper, projects aimed at developing next industrial revolution clusters are analyzed. The objective of the research was to examine new industrial revolution paradigm as a platform for establishing university-based trans-border industry clusters in Poland and Siberia47 and to raise awareness of next industry revolution initiatives.Monograph financed under a contract of execution of the international scientific project within 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, co-financed by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (title: “Functioning of the Local Production Systems in the Conditions of Economic Crisis (Comparative Analysis and Benchmarking for the EU and Beyond”)). Monografia sfinansowana w oparciu o umowę o wykonanie projektu między narodowego w ramach 7. Programu Ramowego UE, współfinansowanego ze środków Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego (tytuł projektu: „Funkcjonowanie lokalnych systemów produkcyjnych w warunkach kryzysu gospodarczego (analiza porównawcza i benchmarking w wybranych krajach UE oraz krajach trzecich”))

Globalization and the Industrial Revolution

This paper argues that trade specialization played an indispensable role in supportingthe Industrial Revolution, allowing the economy to shift resources to the manufacturewithout facing food and raw materials shortage. In our arti cial economy, there are twosectors agriculture and manufacture and the economy is initially closed and under aMalthusian trap. In this economy the industrial revolution entails a transition towards adynamic Heckscher-Ohlin economy. The model reproduces the main stylized facts of thetransition to modern growth and globalization. We show that two-sectors closed-economymodels cannot explain the fall in the value of land relative to wages observed in the 19thcentury and that the transition in this case is much longer than that observed allowingfor trade.

Adult longevity and economic take-off: from Malthus to Ben-Porath

We propose four arguments favoring the idea that medical effectiveness, adult longevity and height started to increase in Europe before the industrial revolution. This may have prompted households to increase their investment in human skills as a response to longer lives and initiated the transition from stagnation to growth.life expectancy, height, industrial revolution, human capital, adult mortality.

Review of Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution by Priya Satia

Review of Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution by Priya Satia