Does Economic History Need GPTs?
34 Pages Posted: 29 Sep 2008
Date Written: September 28, 2008
Abstract
In the last decade one of the most successful memes in economic history has been the concept of a general purpose technology. The rapid multiplication of technologies accorded this designation has raised questions about whether the concept has gotten out of hand. My intent in this essay is to ask whether the concept has indeed gotten out of hand, and, more fundamentally, whether, when the concept of a GPT and the ways it has been used are critically examined, we may conclude that the discipline of economic history could do as well without it. I note that the GPT criteria are not always consistently applied, the technologies under discussion are often not clearly identified, and that the criteria ultimately do a haphazard job of separating the consequential from the inconsequential.
Keywords: GPTs, Technological Change, TFP, Social Savings
JEL Classification: N01, N1, O3, O47
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
Quality-Adjusted Prices for the American Automobile Industry: 1906-1940
-
Uncontrolled Land Development and the Duration of the Depression in the United States
-
American Living Standards, 1888-1994: Evidence from Consumer Expenditures
-
Not What it Used to Be: The Cambridge Economic History of the United States, Volumes II and III
-
The Relative Productivity of American Distribution, 1869-1992
-
The Impact of the Second World War on U.S. Productivity Growth
-
The Impact of the Second World War on US Productivity Growth