Risky Business: investing in innovation and Britain's economic development, 1600-1750

高风险业务：投资创新和英国经济发展，1600 年至 1750 年

• 批准号: ES/V011537/1
• 负责人: Edmond Smith
• 金额: $ 29.33万
• 依托单位: University of Manchester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FV011537%2F1
• 关键词: Risky; Business; investing; innovation; Britain

The pursuit of innovation in a defining feature of our world. Over the past four centuries, innovation has been lauded as an investment opportunity, contributing to economic growth and the improvement of people's daily lives. During the economic boom of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, investors flocked to opportunities in trade, manufacturing, extractive industry, and agriculture in the hope of making their fortunes and take part in Britain's economic success. Successful innovation, through improvement or invention, depended just as much then as it does today on the willingness of individuals to undertake the risky business of overcoming uncertainty and putting their money on the line. Macroeconomic indicators do not tell us how specific projects, innovations and improvements overcome the risk-reticence of investors, nor how individual investors function within wider investment networks. Yet, despite their essential participation in productive and financial innovation, the ways in which individual investors made decisions about where, when, and how to invest have been side-lined in the existing historiography of capitalism."Risky Business: investing in innovation and Britain's economic development, 1600-1750" will address these gaps by investigating how these actors came to view financial investment, perceive risk, and self-consciously participate in 'improvement', 'innovation' and economic growth. In doing so, it will reshape inquiry into the cultural and social dimensions of investment during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries - a period in which financial revolution accelerated the development of the first modern economies. Through this analysis, it will expand beyond both state-focused or institutional accounts and efficient market explanations of the nature of economic development to instead assess 'investment practices' and examine the diverse means by which investment choice was experienced, understood and tackled in everyday life - from an investor's education to their business organisation, experience of failure, and how they functioned as part of an 'investing public'. Thus, this work will make key methodological contributions to current research by modelling the utility of a shift in attention to 'bottom-up' history of investment. More and better examination of the social and cultural practices underlying investment in innovation will transform our understanding of the shape and direction of economic change. This project therefore presents a new research framework for the study of economic development that recognises how individuals and communities responded to, and took part in, ventures that were risky, uncertain, and sometimes driven by considerations that had nothing to do with the profit principle.The project will draw on an extensive body of primary sources and will employ an innovative methodological framework to present and interpret them. Through the development of a unique dataset, it will examine the economic activities, networks and behaviours of actors who invested in innovation and assess the cultural foundations of how they identified opportunity, understood uncertainty and mitigated against risk. Through this interpretation, this project will move beyond 'portfolio analysis'-focused interpretations of investment choice to present a more holistic understanding of how investors engaged in the innovation market and its impact on Britain's economic growth. It will also allow historians and social scientists to interrogate how seemingly unimportant or counter-intuitive relationships between individuals, business, and social engagements had considerable and dynamic influence on wider networks. In conclusion, through this analysis the project will present an interpretation of economic growth that moves beyond assessments of 'where' the economy expanded and start to question precisely 'why' and 'how' investors chose to drive the economy in those directions.

追求创新是我们这个世界的一个显著特征。在过去的四个世纪里，创新一直被誉为一种投资机会，有助于经济增长和人们日常生活的改善。在17世纪和18世纪的经济繁荣时期，投资者蜂拥到贸易、制造业、采掘业和农业领域寻找机会，希望借此发家致富，分享英国经济的成功。通过改进或发明而实现的成功创新，在当时和今天一样，都取决于个人是否愿意承担克服不确定性的高风险业务，并将自己的资金投入到风险中。宏观经济指标并没有告诉我们具体的项目、创新和改进如何克服投资者的风险沉默，也没有告诉我们个人投资者如何在更广泛的投资网络中发挥作用。然而，尽管个人投资者在生产和金融创新中发挥了重要作用，但在现有的资本主义史学中，他们决定何时、何地以及如何投资的方式一直被边缘化。“冒险的生意：投资于创新和英国经济发展，1600-1750”将通过调查这些参与者如何看待金融投资，感知风险，并自觉地参与“改进”，“创新”和经济增长来解决这些差距。在此过程中，它将重塑对17世纪和18世纪早期投资的文化和社会层面的研究——在这一时期，金融革命加速了第一批现代经济体的发展。通过这种分析，它将超越以国家为中心或机构的账户和对经济发展本质的有效市场解释，而是评估“投资实践”，并检查在日常生活中经历、理解和处理投资选择的各种手段——从投资者的教育到他们的商业组织，失败的经验，以及他们如何作为“投资公众”的一部分发挥作用。因此，这项工作将通过模拟关注“自下而上”投资历史的转变的效用，为当前的研究做出关键的方法论贡献。对创新投资背后的社会和文化实践进行更多、更好的考察，将改变我们对经济变革的形态和方向的理解。因此，该项目为经济发展研究提供了一个新的研究框架，该框架认识到个人和社区如何应对和参与有风险的、不确定的、有时由与利润原则无关的考虑所驱动的投资。该项目将利用广泛的第一手资料，并将采用创新的方法框架来呈现和解释这些资料。通过开发一个独特的数据集，它将研究投资于创新的参与者的经济活动、网络和行为，并评估他们如何识别机会、理解不确定性和降低风险的文化基础。通过这种解释，该项目将超越以“投资组合分析”为重点的投资选择解释，更全面地了解投资者如何参与创新市场及其对英国经济增长的影响。它还将使历史学家和社会科学家能够探究个人、企业和社会活动之间看似不重要或反直觉的关系如何对更广泛的网络产生重大而动态的影响。总之，通过这一分析，该项目将提供对经济增长的解释，超越对经济“在哪里”扩张的评估，并开始准确地质疑投资者“为什么”和“如何”选择推动经济向这些方向发展。