The Major Breakdown in Technical Progress

Abstract

A strange destiny awaited the analysis of technical progress as produced by economists two centuries ago. The difficulty in measuring such progress is patent. In the context of an approach from the total factor productivity perspective, it depends on how a given country’s economy grows and the division of its business activities into sectors. Even more important is the fact that technical progress was conceived through the contemplation of a particular history, that of the Industrial Revolution, an expression developed by Adolphe Blanqui.1 An Industrial Revolution represents the passage of a society from one technical system to another, illustrated first and foremost by the original Industrial Revolution that occurred in the late nineteenth century, in which the steam engine, the iron and steel industry and extensive coal-mining defined just such a new technical system. Certain economists subsequently identified other major changes that they considered to be worthy of the definition of ‘Industrial Revolution’.