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...

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 locomotive industry was one of the relatively sophisticated “high-tech” sectors in which Italy, a latecomer country, was successful before 1913. Using technical data on the performance of different vintages of locomotives, we construct a new industry-level index of technical change. We...

In this paper we examine the dynamics of technical change in the Italian locomotive industry in the period 1850-1913. From an historical point of view, the case of the Italian locomotive industry presents a major point of interest: it was one of the few relatively sophisticated “high-tech”...

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...