Innovation, automation and the long-wave theory
Abstract The author considers the role played by technological innovation in the theoretical frameworks found in the literature on long waves. Some writers place emphasis on consumer good innovations, some on capital good innovations, some on new technologies which affect consumer and capital goods, while others take no view on the relative roles of consumer and capital goods innovations. It is suggested that capital goods innovations embodying automation may have been important in the mechanism of the current long wave. Data on employment, rates of return, and value-added for the engineering industries lend support to the view that expectations and propensity to innovate may have been high in the capital goods sector before the upswing of the current long wave.