IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/114978.html

Factor prices and induced technical change in the industrial revolution

Author

Listed:
  • Otojanov, Ravshonbek
  • Fouquet, Roger
  • Granville, Brigitte

Abstract

Using historical data for the 1700–1914 period, this paper analyses the nature and direction of technical change in Britain. The evidence in this paper indicates that, over this long period, labour-saving technology adoption was a major response to changes in relative factor prices, thus supporting the hypothesis that ‘induced innovation’ was a major driver of technical change during the British industrial revolution. Labour saving was made possible and sustained by capital-augmenting and energy-augmenting technical change coupled with continuous capital accumulation and abundant energy supplies. This process placed the British economy on a higher capital–labour ratio equilibrium, and was the primary force driving sustained productivity growth, which further raised wages and living standards.

Suggested Citation

  • Otojanov, Ravshonbek & Fouquet, Roger & Granville, Brigitte, 2023. "Factor prices and induced technical change in the industrial revolution," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114978, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:114978
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/114978/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fouquet, Roger & Hippe, Ralph, 2022. "Twin transitions of decarbonisation and digitalisation: a historical perspective on energy and information in European economies," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 115544, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:114978. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.