The long-run gains from the early adoption of electricity

No 2021-05, Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, GEP

Abstract: This paper explores the effect of the early adoption of technology on local economic development. While timing and intensity of technology adoption are key drivers of economic divergence across countries, the immediate impact of new technologies within advanced countries has been elusive. Resolving this puzzle, this paper documents that the early adoption of electricity across late 19th century Switzerland was conducive to local economic development not just in the short-run, but also in the long-run. Exploiting exogenous variation in the potential to produce electricity from waterpower combined with rapid changes in power generation and transmission technology the evidence presented can plausibly be interpreted as causal. The main mechanism through which differences in economic development persist is increased human capital accumulation and innovation, rather than persistent differences in the way electricity is used.

Keywords: Electricity; Industrialization; Long-run development; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/gep/documents/papers/2021/2021-05.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Long-run Gains from the Early Adoption of Electricity (2021)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:not:notgep:2021-05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from University of Nottingham, GEP School of Economics University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hilary Hughes ().