When Does Labor Scarcity Encourage Innovation?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Acemoglu, Daron
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-3808
• DOI: 10.1086/658160
• 发表日期: 2010
• 页码: 1037-1078
• 关键词: technical change; GROWTH; MODEL

摘要

This paper studies whether labor scarcity encourages technological advances, that is, technology adoption or innovation, for example, as claimed by Habakkuk in the context of nineteenth-century United States. I define technology as strongly labor saving if technological advances reduce the marginal product of labor and as strongly labor complementary if they increase it. I show that labor scarcity encourages technological advances if technology is strongly labor saving and will discourage them if technology is strongly labor complementary. I also show that technology can be strongly labor saving in plausible environments but not in many canonical macroeconomic models.