Economic growth, technological change and employment: empirical evidence for a cumulative growth model with external causation for nine OECD countries: 1960–1990

Abstract

This paper analyzes the relationship between economic growth and technological change in open economies and studies the effects on employment. The main aim is to identify, at the empirical level, possible explanations of the 1960–1990 medium-term dynamics of industrial employment in nine OECD countries—the main six countries of the European Community (Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and West Germany) and three important industrialized OECD countries (Canada, Japan and the United States). The theoretical framework is the Kaldorian scheme of cumulative growth focusing on the interactions between productivity growth and demand (production) growth. The version we adopt for the empirical analysis is the “external causation model”, developed by the French school of regulation, which emphasizes the role of export dynamics, given the pattern of domestic components of aggregate demand, and the specific characteristics of the adopting technologies.