Liberalism Caused the Great Enrichment

Any innovation—mechanical, biological, institutional, scientific, artistic, personal—begins of course as a new idea in a liberated human mind. The point is obvious. But it has not been prominent in economics. The creation of new ideas in human minds, in other words, has been firmly set aside by economists. The ideational change is called liberalism. McCloskey proposes here, mathematically and quantitatively, by historical comparison and by the paradoxical logic of creativity, to offer, that is, a fresh ideational explanation for why the modern world became so very rich.