Fighting for Growth: Labor Scarcity and Technological Progress During the British Industrial Revolution
Hans-Joachim Voth,
Bruno Caprettini and
Alex Trew
No 17881, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers
Abstract:
We collect new data and present new evidence on the effects of labor scarcity on the adoption of labor-saving technology in industrializing England. Where the British armed forces recruited heavily, more machines that economized on labor were adopted. For purposes of identification, we focus on naval recruitment. Using warships’ ease of access to coastal locations as an instrument, we show that exogenous shocks to labor scarcity led to technology adoption. The same shocks are only weakly associated with the adoption of non-labor saving technologies. Importantly, there is also a synergy between skill abundance and labor scarcity boosting technology adoption. Where labor shortages led to the adoption of labor-saving machines, technology afterwards improved more rapidly.
Keywords: Technology adoption; Industrial revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 N43 O14 O31 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17881 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
Related works:
Working Paper: Fighting for Growth: Labor scarcity and technological progress during the British industrial revolution (2022) 
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:cpr:ceprdp:17881
Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP17881
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().