Fighting for Growth: Labor scarcity and technological progress during the British industrial revolution

Hans-Joachim Voth, Bruno Caprettini and Alex Trew

Working Papers from Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow

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; learning-by-doing; Industrial Revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: N13 N43 O14 O31 O47 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
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Related works:
Working Paper: Fighting for Growth: Labor Scarcity and Technological Progress During the British Industrial Revolution (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gla:glaewp:2022_15

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