ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE1
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1965.tb00688.x |
| Published date | 01 June 1965 |
| Date | 01 June 1965 |
ECONOMIC
EFFECTS
OF
TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE’
D.
J.
ROBERTSON
I
THE economic effects of technological change can
be
said to raise
issues affecting the whole of economics.
I
need hardly therefore
apologise for admitting at the outset that this will be a most super-
fical account. The theme of automation suggests a contemporary
approach and it is not therefore possible to take refuge in economic
history; but a technical change rarely occurs without being accom-
panied by other changes in prices or in demand, and immediate
effects are more easily seen than the longer-term outcome.
As
a
result
empirical studies are by no means conclusive in their quantitative or
qualitative assessment of the effects of automation. Moreover, the
effects one observes depend upon whether one is considering the
immediate consequences to
a
particular industry or the more long-
run and general consequences
to
the economy as
a
whole.
The first big question that always arises whenever automation
is discussed is whether the amount and type of technical changes
involved are
so
different from all previous experience that they must
be regarded as being entirely new and distinct from mechanisation or
industrialisation-the older words which served to describe this whole
subject until a few years ago. So far as the technical details are
concerned the impression one forms is that the answer is in no real
doubt.
It
is questionable however whether such differences in tech-
nology have any relevance to the economic issues, which are con-
cerned not with the form of technical change but with the range of
its effects. We have had previous changes
of
technology which must
have produced for earlier generations
a
similar sense of wonder.
Indeed mechanisation itself, the application
of
mechanical power to
the industrial process, is
a
very
marked change which occurred fairly
rapidly, and not, in the whole span of history,
so
very long ago.
But it was not felt to be necessary to rewrite economics on these
previous occasions, since the process of economic change followed
much the same pattern through successive waves of innovation, and
A shortened version
of
a paper presented to the Second International
Conference on Automation and Technological Progress organised by the Metal
Industry Trade Union, Germany, March,
1965.
180
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