Short answers, pulled from the story.
Robert Carson Allen was born on the 10th of January 1947 in Salem, Massachusetts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1969 before completing his doctoral work at Harvard University by 1975.
Robert Carson Allen held professor positions starting with Hamilton College in 1973 and spent over two decades at the University of British Columbia until joining Oxford University in 2000. He served as Professor of Economic History at Nuffield College from 2002 to 2013 before becoming Global Distinguished Professor of Economic History at New York University Abu Dhabi.
The book argues that Britain's industrial takeoff was driven by high wages coupled with cheap energy resources rather than cultural factors alone. By the eighteenth century British wages were relatively high while fuel was inexpensive creating strong incentives for firms to develop labor-saving technologies like the steam engine.
Robert Carson Allen coined the term Engels' pause to describe the period from approximately 1790 to 1840 when British working-class real wages stagnated despite rapid growth in output per capita. This concept highlights the delayed improvement in living standards for laborers in the early decades of industrial growth.
Robert Carson Allen demonstrated that workers in parts of Northwestern Europe enjoyed significantly higher real wages than counterparts in China or India by the 1700s. These material differences in income levels and resource costs were fundamental to why the Industrial Revolution began in Britain rather than elsewhere.