Reassessing Technological Backwardness: Absolving The “Silly Little Bobtailed” Coal Car
反驳了维布伦等人关于20世纪初英国使用小型运煤车是技术落后、阻碍经济增长的观点，论证这些车辆并非技术落后。
Rarely are judgements of entrepreneurial failure and technological backwardness rendered as harshly as when they are rendered upon Britain in the early 1900s. 1 The use of old technologies in manufacturing and transportation are claimed to have locked Britain onto a lower growth path than would have followed if new technologies had been used instead. Technological backwardness, it has been said, was a shackle and Britain lagged behind because of it. 2 Thorstein Veblen made this argument and marshalled a specific example: “silly little bobtailed carriages [railway wagons].” 3 In my dissertation I argue that the small coal wagons were not technologically backward, as Veblen and others since have claimed.