The Contribution of New Technology to Economic Growth: Lessons from Economic History

Nicholas Crafts

CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE)

Abstract: This paper reviews the analysis of technological change by cliometricians. It focuses on lessons about total factor productivity (TFP) from growth accounting and on aspects of social capability that are conducive to the effective assimilation of new technology. Key messages are that when TFP growth is very rapid this typically involves reductions in inefficiency not just technological advance and that even really important new technologies have small initial effects on aggregate productivity. Incentive structures matter greatly for the adoption of new technology but social capability is not independent of the technological epoch as the ICT era has emphasized to Europeans.

Keywords: economic growth; growth accounting; social capability; technological change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/research/c ... s/01.2010_crafts.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: The contribution of new technology to economic growth: lessons from economic history* (2010)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cge:wacage:01

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CAGE Online Working Paper Series from Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jane Snape ().