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Productivity Growth and Machinery Investment: A Long-Run Look, 1870–1980

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

J. Bradford De Long
J. Bradford De Long
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at Harvard Universityand John M. Olin Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138.
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Abstract

Over the past century in six major economies, economic growth has been strongly associated with machinery investment, as is the case for a larger group of nations since 1950. Both macroeconomic patterns and narratives of the history of technology suggest that this association is causal—that a high rate of machinery investment appears to be a necessary prerequisite for rapid long-run growth—and points away from possibilities that rapid growth is the cause of high machinery investment or that a high rate of machinery investment is a good proxy for other factors that are important causes of growth.

Type
Papers Presented at the Fifty-First Annual Meeting of the Economic History Association
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , June 1992 , pp. 307 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1992

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