Trade, Knowledge and the Industrial Revolution

Kevin H. O’Rourke, Ahmed S. Rahman () and Alan M. Taylor ()
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Kevin H. O’Rourke: Trinity College, Dublin, CEPR, and NBER
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Kevin H. O'Rourke ()

No 230, Development Working Papers from Centro Studi Luca d\'Agliano, University of Milano

Abstract: Technological change was unskilled-labor-biased during the early Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but is skill-biased today. This fact is not embedded in extant unified growth models. We develop a model of the transition to sustained economic growth which can endogenously account for both these facts, by allowing the factor bias of technological innovations to reflect the profitmaximising decisions of innovators. Endowments dictated that the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution be unskilled-labor biased. The transition to skill-biased technological change was due to a growth in “Baconian knowledge” and international trade. Simulations show that the model does a good job of tracking reality, at least until the mass education reforms of the late nineteenth century.

Keywords: endogenous growth; demography; trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O33 J13 J24 F15 N10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-05-01
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Related works:
Working Paper: Trade, Knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution (2007)
Working Paper: Trade, Knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution (2007)
Working Paper: Trade, Knowledge, and the Industrial Revolution (2007)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:csl:devewp:230

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