Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/226370 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
GLO Discussion Paper No. 721
Publisher: 
Global Labor Organization (GLO), Essen
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.
Subjects: 
Labour-Saving Technologies
Search Heuristics
Industrial Revolutions
Wavelet analysis
JEL: 
O3
C38
J24
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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