I became an economic historian because I thought then and still believe economic history is more scientific than most of economics. It is/was not afraid to combine rigorous analysis with softer, more verbal theory and analytic narrative.
The Nobel underestimates how important it was that Joel who first promoted the distinction between Smithian growth and Schumperterian growth.
That is, Smithian growth is that growth which emerges from trade and well functioning markets. But societies that experienced Smithian growth usually did not overcome the Malthusian trap enough to provide sustained per capita income growth.
Schumpeterian growth was that based on innovation, which is a combination of creative invention AND the ability to successfully market a viable commercial product that changes the industry. The two do not, and prior to the 18th century only rarely came together.
Furthermore, he later added the idea of knowledge noting that inventing things — such as the imperial Chinese –without a deep understanding of the underlying theory behind the invention’s success limited the extent to which that idea could propagate.
As I tell my students, even when the US was still a minor power (such as the early 19th century) it was already a major innovator with items like the cotton gin, the sewing machine and the American system of manufactures. This idea of systematically making products with interchangeable parts took decades or more to become a true reality, but the Americans were the first to take this seriously at a high level.
Joel understood all this and our discussions on this subject have continued to this day.
Note, that because of the nature of his work, Joel did not get a top 5 pub till the late 2010s. By today’s standards, he would not have gotten tenure at most strong and second tier departments in the world. This shows the limits of the current. The old system where top schools balanced judgment against publication record — which GMU strives to promote — was a better source of truly innovative talent than the mechanical formulas promoted in most of worldwide academia.

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