Morgan Kelly
Irish economic historian at University College Dublin. With Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda, the principal author of “Precocious Albion” (Annual Review of Economics, 2014), the major recent statement that British industrialization is best explained by superior British labour quality (nutrition, mechanical skill, apprenticeship-based human capital) rather than by Allen’s high wages relative to capital and energy. Kelly’s broader research program covers historical labour-quality measurement, climate-and-economy interactions in pre-industrial Europe, and methodological critiques of “spurious results” in the cross-country growth literature.
Associated positions
Section titled “Associated positions”- Upper-tail human capital & bricolage — major contributor.
- High wages & induced innovation — leading critic via the “Precocious Albion” paper.
Key works
Section titled “Key works”- With Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda: “Precocious Albion: A New Interpretation of the British Industrial Revolution” (Annual Review of Economics, 2014).
- With Joel Mokyr and Cormac Ó Gráda: “The Mechanics of the Industrial Revolution” (Journal of Political Economy, 2023).
- “The Standard Errors of Persistence” (Journal of Historical Political Economy, 2019) — methodological critique of cross-country growth-and-history regressions.