More Machines, Better Machines ... or Better Workers?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Boston University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/s0022050711002439
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 44-74
• 关键词: industrial efficiency; labor scarcity; american; GROWTH; TECHNOLOGY; INNOVATION

摘要

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.