Technological progress and factor substitution in the U.S. Textile industry, 1949–1974

Using the translog dual cost function approach, we estimate the elasticity of substitution and the nature of technical change in the U.S. textile industry. A significant extension on the existing studies on this topic is the incorporation of learning by doing as a source of technical change. Our results confirm earlier findings of limited substitution possibilities between capital and labour and that factor argumenting technical change is labour saving and capital using in the Hicksian sense. But this augmentation takes placeboth due to time and learning and further that bias due to the two factors is in the opposite direction.     

Allocation of pollution abatement under learning by doing

This paper examines how learning by doing affects the allocation of pollution abatement between heterogeneous technologies over time. The optimal policy balances current abatement costs against reductions in future costs and infant technologies may be preferred to mature technologies despite greater initial costs. We characterize when a technological winner might emerge and we identify conditions under which optimal abatement is shared across all technologies. Pigouvian taxes can implement the first-best, but may need to be differentiated across technologies. When technical change is induced, an important role of environmental policies is to put abatement on the right technological trajectories.     

A model of embodied technical change and employment

A “vintage” framework is described for studying the effects of technical change on economic development, particular attention being given to the level of employment. The framework is based on the notion that investment in new techniques is a major mechanism through which improvements in productivity are obtained. With the specification of demand and investment functions, a simple dynamic model is developed by means of which the effects of both continuous and discontinuous technical changes can be investigated, under various assumptions regarding the response of other economic variables to such changes. It is shown that a variety of behavioral characteristics are produced when technical change does not occur smoothly; in particular, it is suggested that variations in rates of technical change may act as a determinant of fluctuations in other economic variables.     

We Can Work It Out: The Impact of Technological Change on the Demand for Low-Skill Workers

There is little doubt that technology has had the most profound effect on altering the tasks that we humans do in our jobs. Economists have long speculated on how technical change affects both the absolute demand for labour as a whole and the relative demands for different types of labour. In recent years, the idea of skill‐biased technical change has become the consensus view about the current impact of technology on labour demand, namely that technical change leads to an increase in the demand for skilled relative to unskilled labour painting a bleak future for the employment prospects of less‐skilled workers. But, drawing on a recent paper by Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) about the impact of technology on the demand for different types of skills, this paper argues that the demand in the least‐skilled jobs may be growing. But, it is argued that employment of the less‐skilled is increasingly dependent on physical proximity to the more‐skilled and may also be vulnerable in the long‐run to further technological developments.     

Learning towards system innovation: Evaluating a systemic instrument

In this paper we develop an analytical framework for studying learning processes in the context of efforts to bring about system innovation by building new networks of actors who are willing to work on a change towards sustainable development. We then use it to evaluate two specific intervention programmes carried out by a self-proclaimed ‘system instrument’. The framework integrates elements from the Innovation Systems approach with a social learning perspective. The integrated model proposes essentially that these kinds of systemic instruments can serve to enhance conditions for social learning and that such processes may result in learning effects that contribute to system innovation by combating system imperfections. The empirical findings confirm the assumption that differences in learning can be explained by the existence or absence of conditions for learning. Similarly, the existence or creation of conducive conditions could be linked to the nature and quality of the interventions of the systemic instrument. We conclude that the investigated part of the hypothesised model has not been refuted and seems to have explanatory power. At the same time we propose that further research is needed among others on the relation between learning, challenging system imperfections and system innovation.     

Innovation diffusion,employment and wage policy

Contrary to most writings in the field of evolutionary economics which have a strong microeconomic flavor, here amacroeconomic evolutionary model will be presented in order to deal with themacroeconomic 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.     

The dynamics of environmentalism and the environment

We study the relationship between environmental preferences and the environment. Preferences are transmitted intergenerationally and through social interactions, where we assume that agents are more likely to adopt environmental preferences the larger the amount of pollution. In the basic setting we find that both converge non-monotonically towards an interior steady state. When including technical change we notice that there will be no change in the steady state level of the environment unless technical change is sufficiently strong, which stands in stark contrast to the literature. Upon introducing environmental laws we find that these may lead to a virtually pollution-free environment. This happens if environmental laws are implemented when public support is strong enough.     

Biased Technical Change and the Malmquist Productivity Index

The Malmquist productivity index has many attractive features. One is that it can be epxressed as the product of a technical efficiency change index and a technical change index. In this paper we express the technical change index as the product of a magnitude index and a bias index. We then express the bias index as the product of an output bias index and an input bias index, and we state conditions under which each bias index makes no contribution to productivity change.     

On the Role of Outsiders in Technical Development

In this paper, it is argued that outsiders play an important role in the dynamics of technical change and that, for this reason, outsider involvement is also an important entry if one wants to 'improve' or democratize technical development. Outsiders are defined as people not involved in technical development and not sharing the rules that guide the design and development of a technology. The totality of these rules makes up the technological regime of a technology. Technological regimes are characterized by certain trajectories of technical development. The focus in this paper is on outsiders who may trigger (radical) technical change that transform current technological regimes. Three different types of such outsiders are distinguished and their role in technical development is discussed: professional scientists and engineers, outsider firms and societal pressure groups.     

Learning innovation policy based on historical experience

Innovation fosters structural change and growth and drives socio-economic change. The generation and diffusion of innovation is a dynamic process, which cannot adequately be guided by static policy conceptions. In this paper we will explore the possibility of devising and implementing a ‘learning’ innovation policy. As organisational and technological change is not completely haphazard, we argue that innovation policy can make use of structural regularities in socio-economic change whilst, at the same time, be open to advances in scientific knowledge. We devise a method that achieves these two aims and apply it to a concrete example (knowledge systems). We conclude with practical implications originating from such a ‘learning’ innovation policy.     

Efficiency change,technological change and capital accumulation in Italian regions: a sectoral study

This paper examines the sources of labour productivity in the Italian regions during the period 1980–2004. Five economic sectors are investigated using data envelopment analysis (DEA) and taking into account productive specialisation and sector inefficiencies. Labour productivity change is decomposed into five components by means of Malmquist productivity indices: intra-sector efficiency change, composition efficiency change, input-biased technical change, magnitude component technical change and capital accumulation. Using bootstrap procedure, the components of labour productivity changes are statistically tested. Efficiency analysis shows that productive specialisation is not a source of inefficiency and efficiency gains can be obtained by sector-specific policies. Thus, it is possible to obtain improvements in efficiency in each sector of activity rather than reallocating resources among sectors. The results of the decomposition by sectors reveal heterogeneous sources of growth. The total economy has shown evidence of non-neutral technical change and, it has been found that agriculture, industry and construction experienced capital using technical change. The analysis of the decomposition of the labour productivity growth is complemented by an analysis of β-convergence.     

Intertemporal propensity to consume

Cross-sectionally estimated Engel curves tend to exhibit shapes that imply ultimately decreasing marginal propensities to consume as income rises. This suggests at first sight a tendency to slow down in private consumption. This tendency has to be reconsidered taking into account the fact that Engel curves usually shift significantly over time. We introduce the notion of “intertemporal propensity to consume” to shed more light on the drivers and patterns of the evolution of Engel curves. Using this notion, we are able to identify and measure the direction of the expansion path of consumption as time goes by, while controlling for household characteristics and price levels. Using German household data, we show that, over time, the intertemporal propensity to consume systematically offsets the consumption paths implied by the marginal propensity to consume that is derived cross-sectionally at one point in time. We claim that this difference between marginal and intertemporal propensity to consume should be ascribed to variations in the socioeconomic structures that occur over time and that may be linked both to the supply side (innovation and technical change) and the demand side (learning dynamics of consumers). We also show that changes in relative prices play a minor role in the evolution of Engel curves.     

On the Role of Outsiders in Technical Development

In this paper, it is argued that outsiders play an important role in the dynamics of technical change and that, for this reason, outsider involvement is also an important entry if one wants to 'improve' or democratize technical development. Outsiders are defined as people not involved in technical development and not sharing the rules that guide the design and development of a technology. The totality of these rules makes up the technological regime of a technology. Technological regimes are characterized by certain trajectories of technical development. The focus in this paper is on outsiders who may trigger (radical) technical change that transform current technological regimes. Three different types of such outsiders are distinguished and their role in technical development is discussed: professional scientists and engineers, outsider firms and societal pressure groups.     

Led on the Wrong Track? A Note on the Direction of Technical Change under Environmental Liability Law

This note shows that polluters might opt for technical change which is inferior to other innovations from a social standpoint under environmental liability law. Polluters choose what is socially optimal under strict liability. However, we show that it is possible to have not only too little or too much technical change of a given kind but, importantly, also the wrong kind of technical change under negligence.     

Productivity growth and biased technical change in French higher education

This paper analyses the nature of technical change in the French labour market. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is adopted to investigate productivity change in a sample of higher education leavers over the period 1999 and 2004. In a first step, the Luenberger Productivity Indicator (LPI) is used to estimate and to decompose productivity change. Following LPI, a better productivity is found for the workers in Paris and the well-qualified occupations in France. In analysing the nature of the technical change by the concept of parallel neutrality, technical progress seems to have influenced all professions. In particular, biased inputs of human capital component benefit more for the well qualified professions with an upper increase of the efficiency scores for executives and teachers. Furthermore, some evidences show the key role of “learning by doing” in the worker's adaptation to technical change. Policy implications are then derived from our results.     

A Production Analysis of the Manufacturing Industries in Iran

This article is concerned with the estimation of production functions, returns to scale, and measurement of the rate of technical change using panel data. Technical change is represented by single as well as multiple time trends. The underlying production technology is represented in translog functional form. A random effects model with heteroscedastic variances is used. The models are estimated using the generalized least squares method. The disturbances of cross-sectional units are assumed to be correlated over time. Empirically, our focus is on measuring technical change in Iranian manufacturing industries during the period 1971–1993. Empirical results show that single or multiple time trend representations yield different time behavior of technical change. In the multiple time trends model, we observe a sharp decline in the pattern of technical change in 1978 in relation to the political changes. In the single time trend, as expected, the sharp decline cannot be revealed due to the smooth pattern of technical progress during the entire period of study.     

Regime shifts to sustainability through processes of niche formation: The approach of strategic niche management

The unsustainability of the present trajctories of technical change in sectors such as transport and agriculture is widely recognized. It is far from clear, however, how a transition to more sustainable modes of development may be achieved. Sustainable technologies that fulful important user requirements in terms of performance and price are most often not available on the market. Ideas of what might be more sustainable technologies exist, but the long development times, uncertainty about market demand and social gains, and the need for change at different levels in organization, technology, infastructure and the wider social and institutional context-provide a great barrier. This raises the question of how the potential of more sustainable technologies and modes of development may be exploited. In this article we describe how technical change is locked into dominant technological regimes, and present a perspective, called strategic niche management, on how to expedite a transition into a new regime. The perspective consists of the creation and/or management of nichesfor promising technologies.     

Reference technology sets,Free Disposal Hulls and productivity decompositions

Diewert and Fox (2013) proposed decompositions of a Malmquist-type productivity index into explanatory factors, with a focus on extracting technical progress, technical efficiency change and returns to scale components. A major problem with their decompositions is that it may be difficult to determine the appropriate reference technologies. Using relatively unrestrictive regularity conditions, the paper develops a data envelopment type approach for decomposing productivity growth for a panel of production units into explanatory factors based on the Free Disposal Hull methods pioneered by Tulkens and his co-authors.     

Technological change and path dependence: a co-evolutionary model on a directed graph

In this paper, I model technological change as an evolutionary process of generation and selection of economic activities in a highly path-dependent fashion. There are two key features of our approach. The first is that economic activities are conceived as points of a directed graph and endowed with a corresponding notion of technological distance which determines both the probability of invention of any new activity and the cost of learning it. The second feature is that agents are assumed rational and taken to choose optimally from among the available activities, given the status quo and the associated learning costs. In such a context, we focus on two economies that start off technologically close and evolve side by side with some extent of technological diffusion across them. It is shown that alternative assumptions on the speed of diffusion may have drastically different implications for the evolution of the process. I then argue that this theoretical analysis helps provide some insight on existing empirical evidence; in particular, on the conditions under which relative stagnation or technological catch-up may arise and become consolidated among different economies.     

An estimation of import demand,export supply and technical change for Korea

This paper estimates import demand and export supply functions for Korea based on the translog restricted profit (or GNP) function. It also estimates biases of technological change and applies decomposition analysis to examine the effects of technical change on input demand within the profit function framework. Our findings show that (a) factor inputs, as well as outputs, are, in general, moderately price-elastic and substitutable among each other. (b) the production of investment goods, as well as export goods, is capital-intensive while the production of consumption goods is labout-intensive, (c) technical change is labour-saving and is biased against imports, and (d) there has been a rapid decline of export supply price-elasticity which may be attributable to the rapid growth of export share of GDP (from 4% in 1964 to 38% in 1983). The larger the relative size of export sector and the faster the rate of its growth, the harder will it be to expand export production by drawing own resources from the domestic sector.