Tanguy Le Fur

(AMSE)

will give a presentation on

The Provision of Public Health and the Direction of Technological Progress

Abstract:

The Industrial Revolution was initially characterized by a decline in the average level of skills of workers, as technological progress was unskill-biased and life expectancy stagnant despite output growth. In this paper, I rationalize these features of development in a unified growth model where the skill composition of the labor force influences the direction of technological change, and public health investments are the result of profit-maximization of the elite capitalist class. The timing of such investments appears crucial to generate a switch from unskill- to skill-biased technological progress and allow the economy to take-off to a regime of sustained growth.