International specialization and division of labor requires institutions and organizations to safeguard property rights across international boundari… - Douglass North

The factors we have listed (innovation, economies of scale, education, capital accumulation, etc.) are not causes of growth; they are growth.

Karl Marx and Adam Smith both subscribed to this view. They both saw successful growth as dependent on the development of efficient property rights. Their followers appear in the main to have forgotten this.

By that time a structure of property rights had developed in the Netherlands and England which provided the incentives necessary for sustained growth. These included the inducements required to encourage innovation and the consequent industrialization. The industrial revolution was not the source of modern economic growth. It was the outcome of raising the private rate of return on developing new techniques and applying them to the production process.