Investment-Specific Technical Change in the United States (1947–2000): Measurement and Macroeconomic Consequences

By extrapolating Gordon's measures of the quality bias in the official price indexes, we construct quality-adjusted price indexes for 24 types of equipment and software (E&S) from 1947 to 2000 and use them to measure technical change at the aggregate and at the industry level. Technological improvement in E&S accounts for an important fraction of postwar GDP growth and plays a key role in the productivity resurgence of the 1990s. Driving this finding is 4% annual growth in the quality of E&S in the postwar period and more than 6% annual growth in the 1990s. The acceleration in the 1990s occurred in every industry, consistent with the idea that information technology represents a general-purpose technology. Furthermore, we measure for the aggregate economy and different sectors the “technological gap”: how much more productive new machines are compared to the average machine. We show that the technological gap explains the dynamics of investment in new technologies and the returns to human capital, consistent with the Nelson–Phelps conjecture. Since the technological gap continues to increase—it more than doubled in the past 20 years—our evidence supports the view that at least some of the recent increase in productivity growth is sustainable. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D24, O47.     

Models of technological development and their relevance to advances in transportation

This study presents a general theory of technological development. In essence, two factors play an important role in the process of innovation. One is “learning” or acquisition of relevant production skills; the other is scale of operations of technology. The theory is applied to a variety of cases of innovation in the locomotive, tank ship, and aircraft technology over the course of time. It is suggested that the role of learning is far more important than hitherto recognized. In particular, development of new techniques is based on the rules of thumb rather than on the search for an objective optimum. The empirical results of the study further indicate that the process of learning in the development of transportation technology appears to have taken place largely in the capital-producing rather than in the capital-using sector. This confirms a conjecture of long-standing: at least in some sectors of the economy, all investment has the character of investment in R&D. Further, the role of learning is found to have been comparable to growth of scale. Thus, acquisition of production skills may well be an important alternative to large-scale technology. It is concluded that the process of technological change is appropriately viewed from the inside out rather than exclusively from the outside in.     

Corporate Investment and Information Technologies: The Case of the Greek Refining Industry

The need to improve competitiveness and the enforcement of stringent environmental regulations created the need for the technological modernization of the Greek oil refining industry. The emphasis in this paper is on the pattern of investment decisions, the linkages between the acquisition of production processes and supporting IT applications and on the influence exercised by new technological investment projects on the availability of endogenous resources required to facilitate the adoption of technical change at the firm level. The Greek experience suggests that the role of IT application is becoming increasingly important in large-scale investment projects. The successful implementation of these projects depends, to a large extent, on the learning processes and the accumulation of knowledge at the firm level. These learning processes are directly linked to the specific requirements of the production process and our evidence support that there is a lack of positive feedback between administrative applications and the successful introduction of new manufacturing technologies.     

Corporate Investment and Information Technologies: The Case of the Greek Refining Industry

The need to improve competitiveness and the enforcement of stringent environmental regulations created the need for the technological modernization of the Greek oil refining industry. The emphasis in this paper is on the pattern of investment decisions, the linkages between the acquisition of production processes and supporting IT applications and on the influence exercised by new technological investment projects on the availability of endogenous resources required to facilitate the adoption of technical change at the firm level. The Greek experience suggests that the role of IT application is becoming increasingly important in large-scale investment projects. The successful implementation of these projects depends, to a large extent, on the learning processes and the accumulation of knowledge at the firm level. These learning processes are directly linked to the specific requirements of the production process and our evidence support that there is a lack of positive feedback between administrative applications and the successful introduction of new manufacturing technologies.     

Screening early stage ideas in technology development processes: a text mining and k-nearest neighbours approach using patent information

Applying previous idea screening approaches to large amounts of early stage ideas is recognised as challenging since they rely heavily on manual tasks and human judgments. Considering that technological factors are more important than others in early phases of technology development processes, we propose a machine learning approach to screening ideas by linking the contents of ideas implied in patented inventions and the technological value of the ideas. At the heart of the proposed approach are the text mining technique, to construct keyword vectors from patents, and the k-nearest neighbours algorithm, to capture the relationships between the keyword vectors and the numbers of forward citations of the patents. Integration of these methods makes it possible to assess large amounts of early stage ideas in terms of their potential technological value. A case study of pharmaceutical technology shows that our approach is useful for filtering out ideas of little technological value.     

Parental nurturing and adverse effects of redistribution

This paper suggests that if parental nurturing is a dominating force in human capital formation then income redistribution may not promote economic growth. In particular, if, consistently with empirical evidence, parental human capital complements investment in a child’s education and yields increasing returns in the intergenerational production of human capital, income redistribution may have an adverse impact on the growth rate of average human capital. Redistribution shifts resources towards the less educationally-productive families and thus in the presence of credit markets imperfections and increasing returns, it reduces the aggregate level of investment in human capital. Moreover, if the degree of increasing returns is sufficiently large to produce sustained growth, this adverse effect on human capital formation may outweigh the conventional beneficial effects of redistribution that arises from the interaction between a production technology exhibiting diminishing returns and credit market imperfections.     

科技投入超效率测度的偏DEA分析与资本驱动的区域协调

现有科技活动效率研究存在异质性缺陷，导致无法深入分析引发效率差异的区域演进成因。应用超效率测度理论结合偏DEA视窗法，实证分析2010—2019年全国内地30个省（市）科技活动效率的动态演化进程，并从科技资本投入视角构建面板数据方程，考察不同资本类型驱动下我国科技投入效率空间溢出的直接效应与间接效应，同时，应用Moran′sI指数衡量各省（市）科技活动效率与空间集聚关联性。研究表明：近十年来我国科技活动效率整体呈现快速上升—趋势减缓—明显下降的发展态势，其中，东北地区效率饱和，投资冗余明显；华北地区效率偏低，高效率省（市）带动能力突出；华东和中南地区效率呈螺旋式上升，区域内省（市）组团差异明显；西北地区与西南地区效率偏高，但省（市）分化差异明显。从整体看，我国科技活动效率溢出能力显著，政府资本与企业资本对总效率溢出呈正向影响；外来资本对总效率溢出无明显影响，且资本效应的空间关联性不显著，绝大多数省市的科技活动效率提升处于资本弥补阶段，极少省市处于资本驱动状态。     

Technological change in energy systems: Learning curves, logistic curves and input-output coefficients

Learning curves have recently been widely adopted in climate-economy models to incorporate endogenous change of energy technologies, replacing the conventional assumption of an autonomous energy efficiency improvement. However, there has been little consideration of the credibility of the learning curve. The current trend that many important energy and climate change policy analyses rely on the learning curve means that it is of great importance to critically examine the basis for learning curves. Here, we analyse the use of learning curves in energy technology, usually implemented as a simple power function. We find that the learning curve cannot separate the effects of price and technological change, cannot reflect continuous and qualitative change of both conventional and emerging energy technologies, cannot help to determine the time paths of technological investment, and misses the central role of R&D activity in driving technological change. We argue that a logistic curve of improving performance modified to include R&D activity as a driving variable can better describe the cost reductions in energy technologies. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the top-down Leontief technology can incorporate the bottom-up technologies that improve along either the learning curve or the logistic curve, through changing input-output coefficients. An application to UK wind power illustrates that the logistic curve fits the observed data better and implies greater potential for cost reduction than the learning curve does.     

Low-Growth Equilibrium Accompanied by High Levels of Educational Attainment

The paper demonstrates the low-growth trap associated with high educational attainment in an overlapping-generations model by examining the dual positive effect of senior educated workers in leading-edge technology: on technological progress and on young workers' on-the-job learning. If new technology is sufficiently productive, young workers will demand education to update technology when old, and high technological growth is sustained in the future. Conversely, if new technology is unproductive, they will demand education merely to improve the skills necessary for existing technology, and technological progress will stagnate. Nevertheless, vigorous investment in education occurs since young workers have little hope for on-the-job learning.
JEL Classification Numbers: I20, J24, O33, O40.     

Patterns of expectations for emerging sustainable technologies

Innovation is characterized by uncertainties, high risks, large investments and late returns on investment which make it a complex process. This is particularly true for sustainable innovation where market forces alone cannot be relied upon to realize the desired transitions. Insight in the dynamics of such innovation processes is necessary in order to influence technological change toward a more sustainable direction. However, few instruments and indicators are available to assess the performance of emerging technological innovation systems. In this phase competition often takes place based on expectations rather than on technological performance. This paper therefore focuses on the expectation patterns of technological innovation systems in the exploratory phase through the analysis of the expectation dynamics of three emerging technologies in the field of sustainable mobility within the Netherlands: biofuels, hydrogen as a transport fuel and natural gas as a transport fuel. These technologies do not only compete with the current fossil-fuel based system but also with each other. We have collected over 5000 expectation events regarding these technologies for the period 2000–2008 and discuss the insights generated by the comparison of the observed expectation dynamics to theoretical patterns.     

Niche Entry as a Route to Mainstream Innovation: Learning from the Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell in Stationary Power

The paper charts the efforts to establish a successful niche position for the phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) in stationary power generation, as a precursor to wider technological system and regime change. Market entry depends on matching price/performance characteristics to a niche, and improving performance through increasing returns, the most important and immediate of which are ‘learning effects’. The paper identifies five types of learning effect: (i) migrating the technology to other niches and into the mainstream; (ii) opening the way for other technologies that may have greater scope for migration; (iii) transferring learning within the pioneering company to other technologies or products; (iv) transferring experience to others in the industry; and (v) enabling users to learn. Although PAFC may be perceived as a failure in some respects, a wider perspective suggests it has made a positive and useful contribution to learning.     

老龄化、资源依赖与技术创新——基于全球跨国面板的实证分析

选取全球87个国家2000—2016年的数据,分析了老龄化与资源依赖如何对技术创新产生影响,并运用工具变量二阶段最小二乘法(2SLS)进行了实证检验。研究思路主要基于人力资本这一传导机制,通过计量模型也证实了人力资本在老龄化、资源依赖与技术创新间的传导作用。研究结果表明:老龄化对技术创新并非阻碍作用,反而会促进一国技术创新发展。然而,资源依赖与大多数研究结论一致,会对技术创新带来消极影响。全球各国应该提高资源利用效率,防范自然资源依赖对人力资本投资的挤出效应,并且应注重人力资本投资,应对日益严峻的老龄化现象,提高区域技术创新水平。     

Testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics: An analysis via the learning curve approach

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock-in. It presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors, i.e. learning-by-doing, learning-by-searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system. The paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach. Econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications. These specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias, the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators. Results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock-in phenomena of the energy system. They also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle (maturity). In particular, results point out that, 1) the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty, 2) the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and R&D activities development, 3) conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects.     

Functions of innovation systems: A new approach for analysing technological change

The central idea of this paper is that innovation systems are a very important determinant of technological change. We describe that the emergence of a new innovation system and changes in existing innovation systems co-evolve with the process of technological change. Therefore, it is necessary to create more insight in the dynamics of innovation systems. Traditional methods of innovation system analysis that mainly focus on the structure of innovation systems have proven to be insufficient. Therefore, we propose a framework that focuses on a number of processes that are highly important for well performing innovation systems. These processes are labeled as ‘functions of innovation systems’. After explaining this framework and embedding it in existing literature, we propose a method for systematically mapping those processes taking place in innovation systems and resulting in technological change. This method can be characterized as a process analysis or history event analysis. Clarifying examples are taken from the empirical field of Sustainable Technology Development.     

Niche Entry as a Route to Mainstream Innovation: Learning from the Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell in Stationary Power

The paper charts the efforts to establish a successful niche position for the phosphoric acid fuel cell (PAFC) in stationary power generation, as a precursor to wider technological system and regime change. Market entry depends on matching price/performance characteristics to a niche, and improving performance through increasing returns, the most important and immediate of which are 'learning effects'. The paper identifies five types of learning effect: (i) migrating the technology to other niches and into the mainstream; (ii) opening the way for other technologies that may have greater scope for migration; (iii) transferring learning within the pioneering company to other technologies or products; (iv) transferring experience to others in the industry; and (v) enabling users to learn. Although PAFC may be perceived as a failure in some respects, a wider perspective suggests it has made a positive and useful contribution to learning.     

Economic gains from technology-intensive trade: an empirical assessment

National investment in technological activity is commonly justifiedin terms of the positive impacts upon productivity, internationalcompetitiveness and related aspects of national economic performance.This premise has found a supportive theoretical framework inthe new technology and growth models. Based on extended technology-gapmodels, this study examines cross-country empirical evidenceon the relationship between technology-intensive trade performance(as a proxy for technological output) and per capita economicperformance, utilising 1978 to 1992 data for around 45 nations.The results provide some support for a positive relationshipbetween trade performance and economic returns. However, theweak and often inconsistent results suggest that the unconditionalpursuit of technology-intensive trade improvements may not necessarilyhave the expected net benefits.     

Technological learning,technological substitution,and technological change

From a simple dynamic model of competition between product lines it is shown that the shape of learning curves has a powerful influence on the dynamics of technological substitution. Learning of both production efficiency and marketing efficiency is considered. It is asserted that both types of learning are important and that the two are complementary. It is further speculated that production learning is probably more important for commodities and in situations of low per capita income, whereas market learning gains ascendancy in cases of high income and specialized and diversified product lines. In closing, it is noted that simple competitive models are misleading, first because complementarities and coevolutionary processes are probably as important in the overall development of technology as are competitive processes, and second because optimization of the technological system's parts does not guarantee improvement of the performance of the system as a whole.     

风险投资融合高新技术的转让体系研究

本文提出了利用我国高新技术产业开发区、科技企业孵化器的集聚环境,建设直接服务于促进风险投资与高新技术双方融合的技术转让体系的思路。即将各园区的信息、技术产权交易连通,先区域后全国。针对风险投资几乎可进入所有的技术领域的现实,对供应性产品与服务、应用性产品与服务、复杂系统产品与服务、科学前沿产品与服务等不同的领域,提出了不同的风险投资刺激政策和技术转让服务重点。     

中国股票市场"聪明投资者"行为研究

"聪明投资者"是根据投资绩效来界定投资者的一种新方法,在最新投资实践中有应用,但学术研究却十分缺乏.其意义在于,不同于"选股",这是一种"选人"的新投资思路,即找出"聪明投资者",并跟随其投资,便可以获取超额收益.文章首次提出了"聪明投资者"概念,并剖析了策略获得盈利的原因.研究发现,按历史投资绩效可以界定出"聪明投资者";"聪明投资者"既不同于理性投资者也不同于机构投资者,说明未来研究应重视这一分类;"聪明的个人"比"聪明的机构"绩效更好,偏好差异是造成这种差异的原因,"个人聪明投资者"的目标公司主要以资本运作方式来提高收益(因而超额收益更高),而"机构聪明投资者"的目标公司除了资本运作外更多地依靠自身经营来提高绩效.文章拓展了投资者行为研究的思路,揭示了"另类投资者"研究的重要性,且与国际上"聪明钱效应"的研究相衔接,未来资本市场与实体经济的相互影响也可从"聪明投资者"角度进行研究.文章的研究结果还可用于制订有效的投资策略.     

新疆财政科技投入的反思与对策——基于跨越式发展视角

欠发达地区实施跨越式发展必须依靠科技革命的推动以及制度的实质性创新,而科技进步必须进行相应的科技投入。在既有的科技投入主体中,财政科技投入是科学研究和技术创新活动的重要基础,是决定地方科技进步的源动力,在落后地区尤其如此。新疆实现跨越式发展已经上升为国家战略,其核心是转变新疆经济发展思路,籍科技水平的提高来提高整体产业竞争力。本文检验了新疆财政科技投入与新疆区域经济发展的因果关系,发现新疆的财政科技投入与经济增长之间存在着单向因果关系。即经济的发展对财政科技投入促进作用十分明显,而财政科技投入对经济发展的促进作用不明显。没有出现＂科技投入→科技进步→经济增长→科技投入→科技进步→经济增长＂的良性循环机制。基于此,在举国科技援疆之际,新疆应该积极改善科技投入机制,实现科技投入和经济发展的良性互动。