This paper studies the conditions under which an IT revolution may endogenously occur. To this end, we construct an endogenous growth multisectoral model with a preeminent IT sector. Technological progress is embodied : New softwares can only be run on the most recent generations and hardware. While the new softwares are copyrighted during a fixed period of time, they become public knowledge at a certain point in time, which generates positive externalities in the rest of the economy. First, we find that our model can give rise to multiple steady states due to strategic complementarities. Then we focus on the dynamic response of the economy to adverse shocks on the level of disembodied technological progress. Substitution effects are shown to arise : The labor resources are diverted from the final goods sector to sustain the creation and production of new softwares. During the IT boom, labor productivity's growth slowdowns, the skill premimum rises as well as the value of firms undertaking research. However, the registered IT boom is always transitory and nothing can be said about the long run sustainability of an IT-driven growth regime.

We explore the hypothesis that demographic changes which began in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are at the root of the acceleration in growth rates at the dawn of the modern age. During this period, life tables for Geneva and Venice show a decline in adult mortality; French marriage registers reveal an important increase in literacy; historians measure an acceleration of economic growth. We develop an endogenous growth model with a realistic survival law in which rising longevity increases individual incentives to invest in education and fosters growth. We quantitatively estimate that the observed improvements in adult mortality account for 70% of the growth acceleration in the pre-industrial age. Copyright The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics", 2003.

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We investigate and interpret sorne of the properties of a multi-sectoral growth model with endogenous embodied technical change in the light of the ongoing debate on the viability of an IT based growth regime. In particular. we illustrate the two main views of the 1995-2000 IT boom in the USA. If it only cornes from productivity gains in the production of hardware and/or softwares, and even though these gains are permanent, the story could be just one of temporary massive capital deepening and no long term growth effect. In contrast, if this boom relies on productivity gains in R&D, there is room for a permanent IT growth regime associated with a permanent accumulation of both hardware and software.