Nathan Rosenberg is an American economist

Economist

An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...

 specializing in the history of technology

History of technology

The history of technology is the history of the invention of tools and techniques, and is similar in many ways to the history of humanity. Background knowledge has enabled people to create new things, and conversely, many scientific endeavors have become possible through technologies which assist...

. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin in 1955, and has taught at Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

 (1955–1957), the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...

 (1957–1961), Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

 (1961–1964), Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (1967–1969), the University of Wisconsin (1969–1974) and Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 (1974–), where he is the Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Public Policy in the Department of Economics. In 1989 he was visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions

Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions

The Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions was established on 5 February 1944 from a sum of £44,000 received from the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press in 1943 and augmented by a further £5,000 in 1946...

 at the University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

.

Rosenberg's contribution to understanding technological change was acknowledged by Douglass C. North in his Nobel Prize lecture entitled "Economic Performance through Time".

In 1986's How the West Grew Rich, Rosenberg and co-author L.E. Birdzell, Jr. argued that Western Europe's economic success grew out of a loosening of political and religious controls, and that Western medieval life was not actually organized in castles, cathedrals, and cities; but that it was organized more in the rural areas in huts and in places with reliable access to food. This is why, the book states, most of the population was to some extent involved in agriculture and its related occupations of transporting produce from place to place. The importance of these ideas have since been more fully recognized by the discipline of international economic history. The Rosenberg-Birdzell hypothesis is that innovation is produced by economic competition among politically independent entities. This hypothesis is tested and confirmed by Joel Mokyr

Joel Mokyr

Joel Mokyr is an American economic historian. He is the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University....

 in his contribution to the Festschrift

Festschrift

In academia, a Festschrift , is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during his or her lifetime. The term, borrowed from German, could be translated as celebration publication or celebratory writing...

-issue of Research Policy, which was published in honor of Nathan Rosenberg in 1994.

Publications

• Economic Planning in the British Building Industry, 1945-1949, 1960
• The American System of Manufactures: The Report of the Committee on the Machinery of the United States 1855, and the Special Reports of George Wallis and Joseph Whitworth, 1854, 1969
• The Economics of Technological Change: Selected Readings, 1971
• Technology and American Economic Growth, 1972
• Perspectives on Technology, 1976
• The Britannia Bridge: The Generation and Diffusion of Technological Knowledge (with Walter G. Vincenti), 1978
• Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics, 1983
• International Technology Transfer: Concepts, Measures, and Comparisons (editor, with Claudio Frischtak), 1985
• The Positive Sum Strategy: Harnessing Technology for Economic Growth (editor, with Ralph Landau), 1986
• How The West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation Of The Industrial World (with L. E. Birdzell), 1986
• Technology and the Pursuit of Economic Growth (with David C. Mowery
  David C. Mowery
  David C. Mowery is the William A. & Betty H. Hasler Professor of New Enterprise Development at the Walter A. Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. He earned a BA, an MA, and a Ph.D. in economics, each from Stanford University...
  
  ), 1991
• Technology and the Wealth of Nations (editor, with Ralph Landau and David C. Mowery), 1992
• Exploring the Black Box: Technology, Economics, and History, 1994
• The Emergence of Economic Ideas: Essays in the History of Economics, 1994
• Paths of Innovation: Technological Change in 20th-Century America (with David C. Mowery), 1998
• Chemicals and Long-Term Economic Growth: Insights from the Chemical Industry (editor, with Ashish Arora and Ralph Landau), 2000
• Schumpeter and the Endogeneity of Technology: Some American Perspectives, 2000 (The Graz Schumpeter Lectures)