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Using historical data for the 1700–1914 period, this paper analyses the nature and direction of technical change in Britain. The evidence in this paper indicates that, over this long period, labour‐saving technology adoption was a major response to changes in relative factor prices, thus supporting the hypothesis that 'induced innovation' was a major driver of technical change during the British industrial revolution. Labour saving was made possible and sustained by capital‐augmenting and energy‐augmenting technical change coupled with continuous capital accumulation and abundant energy supplies. This process placed the British economy on a higher capital–labour ratio equilibrium, and was the primary force driving sustained productivity growth, which further raised wages and living standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The empirical validity of the effect of pension reforms on domestic savings in the UK has been investigated using an Auto-regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model capable of testing for the existence of a long-run relationship regardless of whether the underlying time series are individually I(1) or I(0). The total savings response to change in pension savings is positive and significant, but an increase in occupational pension saving appears offset by a decrease in other forms of saving. This paper concludes that there is no firm evidence that aggregate savings increase considerably because of privately funded pension schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using annual data over a long time horizon from 1900 to 2000 for the UK, this study finds the existence of a Fisher relation via Johansen cointegration tests. The cointegrating relationship between the two variables suggests a significant long-run equilibrium with a positive coefficient of more than one during the stated period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]