2004/11 | LEM Working Paper Series | |
Technological Revolutions and Economic Growth: The “Age of Steam” Reconsidered |
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Carolina Castaldi and Alessandro Nuvolari |
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Abstract | ||
The aim of this paper is to review the development of
steam power technology in the light of the key ideas proposed in General
Purpose Technology growth models. We intend to provide a critical evaluation of
the interpretive power of such models, which are elaborated around three
properties of technological revolutions namely, their technological dynamism, their pervasiveness and their capacity of inducing further innovations
(technical and organizational) in the using sectors. Although intuitively appealing, these concepts ought to be more
rigorously defined, especially in view of empirical applications of the models.
Indeed, the case of the "age of steam" shows a technology that is
surely pervasive, but it is characterized by uneven rates of technical advance
across application sectors. We argue
that GPT based growth models do not seem particularly well-equipped for taking into account the
"local" aspect of the accumulation of technological knowledge.
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