This paper examines the dynamics of technical change in the Italian locomotive industry in the period 1850-1913. From an historical point of view, this industry presents a major point of interest: it was one of the few relatively sophisticated "high-tech" sectors in which Italy, a latecomer...

The long-run evolution of per-capita income exhibits a structural break often associated with the Industrial Revolution. We follow Mokyr (2002) and embed the idea that this structural break reflects a regime switch in the evolution of technological knowledge into a dynamic framework, using Airy...