A new GLO Discussion Paper studies U.S. patenting activity to provide evidence on the history of labour-saving innovations back to the early 19th century.

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GLO Discussion Paper No. 721, 2020

Back to the past: the historical roots of labour-saving automation – Download PDF
by Staccioli, Jacopo & Virgillito, Maria Enrica

GLO Fellow Maria Enrica Virgillito

Author Abstract: This paper, relying on a still relatively unexplored long-term dataset on U.S. patenting activity, provides empirical evidence on the history of labour-saving innovations back to early 19th century. The identification of mechanisation/automation heuristics, retrieved via textual content analysis on current robotic technologies by Montobbio et al. (2020), allows to focus on a limited set of CPC codes where mechanisation and automation technologies are more prevalent. We track their time evolution, clustering, eventual emergence of wavy behaviour, and their comovements with long-term GDP growth. Our results challenge both the general-purpose technology approach and the strict 50-year Kondratiev cycle, while provide evidence of the emergence of erratic constellations of heterogeneous technological artefacts, in line with the developmentblock approach enabled by autocatalytic systems.

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GLO Discussion Papers are research and policy papers of the GLO Network which are widely circulated to encourage discussion. Provided in cooperation with EconStor, a service of the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, GLO Discussion Papers are among others listed in RePEc (see IDEAS,  EconPapers). Complete list of all GLO DPs – downloadable for free.

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