Falling real wages during an industrial revolution

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  • Resum

    The Industrial Revolution was characterized by technological progress and an increasing capital intensity. Why did real wages stagnate or fall in the beginning? I answer this question by modeling the Industrial Revolution as the introduction of a relatively more capital intensive production method in a standard neoclassical framework. I show that {\sl real wages fall in the beginning of an industrial revolution if and only if technological progress in the relatively more capital intensive sector is relatively fast.}
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