About: Habakkuk thesis

The Habakkuk thesis, proposed and named after British economist Sir John Habakkuk, is a theory that land abundance and labor scarcity in antebellum America led to high wages, which resulted in effective searches for labor-saving technological innovations. This stimulated the growth of machinery and the development of the American system of manufacturing. Initially published in Habakkuk's 1962 work, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labor-Saving Inventions, the thesis garnered attention as the classical interpretation and explanation of . The thesis has been criticized for leaving out high interest rates, lack of machinery as capital and scarce and expensive factors (e.g. labor and capital).