| 来源类型 | Discussion paper |
| 规范类型 | 论文 |
| 来源ID | DP7257 |
| DP7257 Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia | |
| Ekaterina Zhuravskaya; Ruben Enikolopov; Maria Petrova | |
| 发表日期 | 2009-04-12 |
| 出版年 | 2009 |
| 语种 | 英语 |
| 摘要 | This paper studies the conditions under which the scarcity of a factor (in particular, labor) encourages technological progress and technology adoption. In standard endogenous growth models, which feature a strong scale effect, an increase in the supply of labor encourages technological progress. In contrast, the famous Habakkuk hypothesis in economic history claims that technological progress was more rapid in 19th-century United States than in Britain because of labor scarcity in the former country. Similar ideas are often suggested as possible reasons for why high wages might have encouraged rapid adoption of certain technologies in continental Europe over the past several decades, and as a potential reason for why environmental regulations can spur more rapid innovation. I present a general framework for the analysis of these questions. I define technology as strongly labor saving if the aggregate production function of the economy exhibits decreasing differences in the appropriate index of technology,q, and labor. Conversely, technology is strongly labor complementary if the production function exhibits increasing differences in q and labor. The main result of the paper shows that labor scarcity will encourage technological advances if technology is strongly labor saving. In contrast, labor scarcity will discourage technological advances if technology is strongly labor complementary. I provide examples of environments in which technology can be strongly labor saving and also show that such a result is not possible in certain canonical macroeconomic models. These results clarify the conditions under which labor scarcity and high wages encourage technological advances and the reason why such results were obtained or conjectured in certain settings, but do not always apply in many models used in the growth literature. |
| 主题 | Development Economics ; International Macroeconomics |
| 关键词 | Innovation Technological change Habakkuk hypothesis High wages Labor scarcity |
| URL | https://cepr.org/publications/dp7257 |
| 来源智库 | Centre for Economic Policy Research (United Kingdom) |
| 资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
| 条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/536094 |
| 推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Ekaterina Zhuravskaya,Ruben Enikolopov,Maria Petrova. DP7257 Media and Political Persuasion: Evidence from Russia. 2009. |
| 条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 | |||||
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