Other aspects of Allen’s story • Market size may well matter as well (Crafts 2010). The small size of the American market could explain why the spinning jenny was not adopted there despite being profitable.
• Little evidence that technological progress exhibited a labour-saving bias (Mokyr 2002).
Evidence from patents (MacLeod 1988) suggests that, even at the end of the eighteenth century, only 21 per cent of inventions was intended to save labour.
• Allen’s argument could more appropriately be seen as complementary to Mokyr’s claims. The Industrial Revolution resulted from a combination of factors on both the supply and demand side of the market of innovation (Crafts 2010).
