Abstract
Technological change as incorporated into an economy through capital investment has a bearing on the organisation of production and the derived demand for labour. A widely held view is that innovation is the main spring of economic growth. We see this in the business cycle theory of Schumpeter (1934) and the capital dynamics of Hicks (1977). Both attempt to discover how an innovative impulse works itself out in a multisector economy in which there is generated a dynamic feedback process. An innovation influences the productivity and demand for labour and the distribution of income between wages and profits which has a feedback effect on investment by firms, and hence, future demand for labour. In a multisector economy where a structural shift in the demand for labour may arise, Hicks suggested that an ‘innovative impulse may have drastic and possibly unacceptable effects on distribution’ and that the prospects of convergence from one full employment equilibrium to another ‘looks poor’ (Hicks 1977, pp. 190–195, Ch. 2).
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Day, R.H., Hanson, K.A. (1986). Adaptive Economising, Technological Change and the Demand for Labour in Disequilibrium. In: Nijkamp, P. (eds) Technological Change, Employment and Spatial Dynamics. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 270. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46578-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46578-9_16
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