Steam as a General Purpose Technology: A Growth Accounting Perspective
用增长核算方法估算蒸汽对19世纪英国经济增长的贡献，发现1830年前影响甚微，峰值出现在瓦特发明约百年后，且与ICT相比影响较小。
The contribution of steam to British economic growth in the nineteenth century is estimated using growth accounting methods similar to those recently employed to examine the role of ICT. The results indicate that steam contributed little to growth before 1830 and had its peak impact about a hundred years after Watt's famous invention. Only with the advent of high-pressure steam after 1850 did the technology realise its potential. Compared with ICT, steam's impact on the annual rate of growth was modest. It is unlikely that these conclusions are vulnerable to quantification of hitherto unmeasured TFP spillovers. Copyright 2004 Royal Economic Society.