New Goods and the Transition to a New Economy

Jeremy Greenwood and Gokce Uysal

No 5, Economie d'Avant Garde Research Reports from Economie d'Avant Garde

Abstract: The U.S. went through a remarkable structural transformation between 1800 and 2000. In 1800 the majority of people worked in agriculture. Barely anyone did by 2000. What caused the rapid demise of agriculture in the economy? The analysis here concentrates on the development of new consumer goods associated with technological progress. The introduction of new goods into the framework eliminates the need to rely on satiation points, subsistence levels of consumption, and the like. The analysis suggests that between 1800 and 2000 economic welfare grew by at least 1.5 percent a year, and maybe as much 10 percent annually, the exact number depending upon the metric preferred.

Keywords: technological progress; structural change; new goods; welfare indices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E13 O11 O41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2003-08
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.jeremygreenwood.net/papers/n2n.pdf full text (application/pdf)
None

Related works:
Journal Article: New Goods and the Transition to a New Economy (2005)
Working Paper: New Goods and the Transition to a New Economy (2004)
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:eag:rereps:5

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Economie d'Avant Garde Research Reports from Economie d'Avant Garde
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jeremy Greenwood ().