Multivariate analysis requires us to collect data about the relevant factors that contributed to an outcome, and then to assess the individual factors. The usual way to do this statistical analysis is on a spreadsheet. In our readings and in class, we have discussed the limits of looking for one cause for a complex outcome -- for example, we have discussed how a very large number of immigrants in the North contrasts with a smaller number in the South, while noting the prevalence of private land-tenure in the North in contrast to the South, and the presence of roads, railroads, and canals in the North to a much greater extent than in the South, etc., and we have discussed the "spreadsheeet" approach of looking at how each of these (and other) factors interact.
The economist Deirdre McCloskey generally disputes this approach because she disagrees with the relevance of institutions, technology, and capital as primary shapers of outcomes, instead insisting that it was ideas -- specifically, the idea of the rule of law -- that transformed the economy of the West.
Is there something McCloskey (and for that matter Heilbroner, or Rostow, or other economic historians) overlooked in searching for the one single transformative force in 19th century economic history?
Required:
a. No, McCloskey and the other historians basically got it right -- because without the rule of law, no discoveries of new technologies would have happened, and they only happened in connection with the development of the cotton trade.
b. Yes. She forgot to mention energy, specifically, the energy revolution, which occurred when old-style solar power (firewood, dung, wind) was replaced by fossil-fuel power.
c. No, because McCloskey just focused on England and didn't concern herself with developments in Europe, even though one ought to be able to explain economic change in more than one place.
d. No, although she could have mentioned the longer growing season of the South.