Hello everyone. Welcome to Ecypus Global Economy Podcast, where we are talking today about the long-run effects of technology on economic growth.

We do this together with Björn Breye, who is a postdoc researcher at the ULB, and has developed

a very interesting paper on precisely the long run effects of technology on economic growth

in from a historical perspective and we are discussing

today how that relate to today's context of digital technology developments

Björn Bray has done a PhD in economics at the University of Nottingham and is today's guest at our podcast.

Hello, Bjorn, welcome.

Hello, Eric.

Great to be here.

Looking forward to talk to be talking to you about my research today.

We are also very excited to have you here on our podcast.

Bjorn, I really liked the paper.

I thought it was very interesting.

It's a very thorough paper.

Could you tell us a little bit more of what you have done in a paper

and what your main result is?

Thanks, Eric.

So the paper is really about understanding how technology shapes long-rent development.

It focuses on the adoption of electricity in Switzerland in the late 19th century.

So really in this period of experimentation, when Thomas Edison kind of rolls out the light bulb in New York, it's really this between 1880 and 1900 where like electricity starts getting adopted in Switzerland as well. And it's kind of one of the countries at the forefront of adoption. And I look at how the local adoption of technology across different Swiss districts drives structural

change and also more broadly economic development in terms of income.

And what I see is that in the short run already between 1880 and 1900, there is this move

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