Back to the past: the historical roots of labour-saving automation

Jacopo Staccioli and Maria Enrica Virgillito

No 721, GLO Discussion Paper Series from Global Labor Organization (GLO)

Abstract: This paper, relying on a still relatively unexplored long-term dataset on U.S. patenting activity, provides empirical evidence on the history of labour-saving innovations back to early 19th century. The identification of mechanisation/automation heuristics, retrieved via textual content analysis on current robotic technologies by Montobbio et al. (2020), allows to focus on a limited set of CPC codes where mechanisation and automation technologies are more prevalent. We track their time evolution, clustering, eventual emergence of wavy behaviour, and their comovements with long-term GDP growth. Our results challenge both the general-purpose technology approach and the strict 50-year Kondratiev cycle, while provide evidence of the emergence of erratic constellations of heterogeneous technological artefacts, in line with the developmentblock approach enabled by autocatalytic systems.

Keywords: Labour-Saving Technologies; Search Heuristics; Industrial Revolutions; Wavelet analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C38 J24 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Back to the past: the historical roots of labor-saving automation (2021)
Working Paper: Back to the past: the historical roots of labour-saving automation (2020)
Working Paper: Back to the past: the historical roots of labour-saving automation (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:glodps:721

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