Habakkuk thesis

English

Etymology

Proposed by John Habakkuk (1915–2002), British economic historian, in his 1962 work American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labour-Saving Inventions.

Proper noun

the Habakkuk thesis

  1. (economics) The theory that land abundance and labor scarcity in the 19th-century United States led to high wages, which resulted in labor-saving technological innovations and the development of the American system of manufacturing based on the extensive use of machinery and interchangeable parts.
    Synonyms: Habakkuk hypothesis, Rothbarth-Habakkuk thesis

Further reading
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