How much of the rapid growth in labor productivity in nineteenth century cotton weaving arose from capital-labor substitution and how much from technical change? Using an engineering production function and detailed information on inventions, I find that factor substitution accounts for little...

Will new technologies cause industries to shed jobs, requiring novel policies to address mass unemployment? Sometimes productivity-enhancing technology increases industry employment instead. In manufacturing, jobs grew along with productivity for a century or more; only later did productivity...

This paper measures plant-level productivity gains associated with learning curves across the entire manufacturing sector. We measure these gains at plant startups and also after major employment changes. We find: 1) The gains are strongly associated with a variety of human capital measures...