Engines of Liberation

Electricity was born at the dawn of the last century. Households are inundated with a flood of consumer durables. What was the impact of this consumer goods revolution. It is argued here that the consumer goods revolution was conducive to liberating women from the home. To analyze this hypothesis, a Beckerian model of household production is developed. Households must decide whether or not to adopt the new technologies and whether a married woman should work. Can such a model help to explain the rise in married female labor-force participation that occurred in the last century? Yes.The second industrial revolution, technology adoption, household production theory, female labor force participation.

Engines of Liberation

Electricity was born at the dawn of the last century. Households were inundated with a flood of new consumer durable goods. What was the impact of this consumer durable goods revolution? It is argued here that the consumer goods revolution liberated women from the home. To analyze this hypothesis, a Beckerian model of household production is developed. Households must decide whether to adopt the new technologies or not, and whether married woman should work. Can such a model explain the rise in married female labor-force participation that occurred in the last century? Yes.The second industrial revolution, technology adoption, household production theory, female labor-force participation.

The replacement problem

We construct a vintage capital model of economic growth in which the decision to replace old technologies with new ones is modeled explicitly. Depreciation in this environment is an economic, not a physical concept. We describe the balanced growth paths and the transitional dynamics of this economy. We illustrate the importance of vintage capital by analyzing the response of the economy to fiscal policies designed to stimulate investment in new technologies.Economic development

EconomicDynamics Interviews Mehmet Yorukoglu on Economic Revolutions

Mehmet Yorukoglu is Assistant Professor of Economics and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago. His fields of interests are technology innovations, fluctuations and investment.