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More Machines, Better Machines…or Better Workers?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2012

JAMES BESSEN
JAMES BESSEN*
Affiliation:
Lecturer, Boston University School of Law, and Director, Research on Innovation, 202 High Head Road, Harpswell, ME 04079. E-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

How much of the rapid growth in output per man-hour in nineteenth-century cotton weaving arose from technical change and how much arose from price-driven substitution of capital for labor? Using an engineering production function, I find that factor price changes account for little of the growth in output per man-hour. However, much of the growth and most of the apparent labor-saving bias arose not from inventions, but from improved labor quality—better workers spent less time monitoring the looms. Labor quality played a critical role in the persistent association between economic growth and capital deepening in this important sector.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , 12 March 2012 , pp. 44 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2012

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