Innovation diffusion, employment and wage policy

Contrary to most writings in the field of evolutionary economics which have a strong microeconomic flavor, here a macroeconomic evolutionary model will be presented in order to deal with the macroeconomic employment effect of technical change where there is just one old and one new technology. Several authors who favour an evolutionary approach to the theory of technical change share an optimistic view with respect to the macroeconomic employment effect of technical change. In the paper we are dealing with the question of whether this optimistic view is a necessary result of an evolutionary approach to technical change or rather of some other characteristic of the models used. It is shown that the evolutionary approach to technical change is not inherently optimistic or pessimistic with respect to the employment effects. Rather it is the labour market behaviour that will decide, whether the employment effects of technical change are positive, negligible or even negative.