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While automation exists today in only a small number of institutions, the author believes it will have a profound influence on the future of American marketing institutions. He goes on to analyze this impact on both the wholesale level and retail level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the effects of decentralization in agricultural marketing at the time of publication. According to the author, there is a general trend taking place in which farm produce is ceasing to pass through central markets before reaching consumers and is beginning to move directly from farmers to retailers. The author notes that innovations in transportation were a major cause of this change. The advent and spread of high speed trucks and concrete highways are reducing the costs of transportation and enabling the short-haul of goods to markets.

The concern in this article is with laggards, the persons who are last to adopt an offering. Two measures were used to identify laggard food buyers of new grocery products. Then various univariate tests and a multivariate test, discriminant analysis, were used to help distinguish correlates of laggards and their behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elaboration of technology leads to increasing complexity of the enterprise using it, and the type of technology available for particular purposes sets limits to the types of structures appropriate for organizations. Comparing the mining enterprise, the manufacturer, the hospital, and the university, the authors advance a number of propositions about relationships between technology and administrative processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major difficulty of many chief executives is the evaluation of the quality, cost, and effectiveness of a company's overall data-processing operation. Some companies subject their data-processing activities to a periodic comprehensive checkup. This article describes some of the matters covered by such a "Management Review of Data Processing" and its use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article refers to research by Jacques Ellul, Norbert Wiener, and Marshall McLuhan, the social impact of electronic technology, the Norse legend of "Twilight of the Gods," and a trend away from specialization. New technology will create conflict between the organization and the individual as social values change. Technical elites will be generalists who have a commitment to society instead of the organization, demand job satisfaction, and manipulate the media. Mechanical technology and specialization will diminish and organizational structure will change because electronics will recentralize power and control via computers and real time information. Integrators or general specialists are mentioned, as well as the organization's organic interdependence.

The article reports on research and development policy in the United States, which supplies private industry and the public with information about technical advances that have commercial applications. Agencies involved in the spin-off function include: Clearinghouse for Federal Scientific and Technical Information; Technology Utilization Program at the National Aeronautics and Space Agency; Department of Defense; Atomic Energy Commission; Smithsonian Institution; and Library of Congress. Three categories of spin-offs, advice for finding research reports on useful spinoffs, and the State Technical Services Act (HR 3420) are mentioned. An appendix lists spin-offs in the construction, electronics, chemical, and metal-working industries.

The article examines the transformation in the socio-occupational structure of labor in the socialized sector in Poland. Technological and economic progress, the development of industry and other sectors of the national economy, and related socioeconomic processes have affected the dynamics and structure of employment and have occupationally activated the population. Employment dynamics during 1950-1970 in the nonagricultural sectors of material production were marked by a near doubling of the number of persons employed. There was an exceptionally rapid growth in employment in the socialized sector. The number of economically active members of the family has been greatly increased by the employment of women, which also raises the family-income figures. The general trend of changes in the structure of employment can be seen in a constant decrease in the number of manual workers in the total labor force and in the continuously growing percentage of nonmanual workers. Nonmanual workers constitute a majority in the service category, both material and non-material.

The article examines the impact of technical progress on macroeconomics. To take into account the effect of technical progress on the allocation of relative prices and resources, the aggregative approach must be discarded in favor of a multi-sectoral model. The change in labor input takes into account the changes in the hours worked per year, the change in employment per unit of output, and for the economy as a whole and for most of the major sectors, the change in the quality of labor caused by shifts in the occupational distribution.

This article analyzes the role of technological change as a contributor to economic growth. Increasingly, economists have become more confident of their ability to deal with technological events in economic terms. This is evidenced by the publication of the book "Invention and Economic Growth," by Jacob Schmookler in 1966. Essentially, Schmookler asserted that, given the state of science the supply of inventions is, in effect, perfectly elastic, and at the same price, in all industries. The author argued that inventions are not equally possible in all industries. This is due to an intervening principle: the differential development of the state of sub-disciplines of science and bodies of useful knowledge. In this respect, the author concluded that the study or failure is essential to a determination of the role of supply side variables in the inventive process.

This article proposes formulas for determining and estimating the types of biased technological progress in the U.S. The authors' estimates indicate that technological progress in the U.S. for the period of 1909-1960 could be Solow labor-saving. The authors obtain formulas which will be useful in determining the direction of technological progress. They use the usual production function which utilizes labor and capital. The author emphasizes that the elasticity of factor substitution differs from industry to industry.

Economic growth is quite definitely subject to limits. First, there are ultimate or natural limits imposed by the finite character of the earth. Ruling out the possibility of importing materials and energy from outside the earth on an ever increasing scale, the second law of thermodynamics, the entropy law, makes the existence of this limit quite certain. Scientific and technological advance can postpone and moderate the way this limit is reached but cannot repeal fundamental laws of nature. Ultimately, therefore, people must choose how they want population and material economic growth to cease, through the operation of natural forces or in a manner and at a time chosen by man. Second, limits are imposed by "rate and magnitude" problems, by the speed with which, under the best of circumstances, the problems thrown up by growth can be resolved. These problems are related to the time lag inherent in research, investment and institutional change, lags that cannot be significantly reduced except perhaps at the cost of growth itself.

This article explores the relationship between management education and technological development. It is worth noting that management education has become a very important issue during the last few years. This is not just a result of a higher degree of interest in educational methods but rather an outgrowth of the increasing importance of technological developments, which in the industrialized world--through an interrelated set of economic, social, and political factors--puts great demands on management education. This is so because the demands on individual managers are not only more complex, and consequently call for better managerial qualifications, but because the demands are also continually changing. The dynamics of technological development, the larger size of formal organizations and markets, the increasing involvement of governments in all kinds of activities, and social changes make it more and more difficult to adjust the content and methods of management education to changing technology.

The article presents information on the book "The Theory of Economic Progress," by C.E. Ayres. The author makes a rather rigorous distinction between the technological process on the one hand and institutionalized ways of behaving on the other. Ayres assumes explicitly or implicitly that novelty is confined to the more or less accidental confluence of pre-existing tools and, ultimately, to pre-existing machines. In other words, reason and ideas, which are really habitualized ways of thinking, tend to preclude progress. Ayres believes that technological progress is simply the result of the combination of pre-existing tools or of technological devices and that such combinations, although accidental with respect to thinking, are necessary or "inevitable" in the sense that un-thinking physical processes bring them together. The world must be conceived ultimately as neutral stuff if it is to take on or constitute the basis of a new object. Final causes must be relegated to minds of men and taken out of nature as such if inventions is to be possible, The goals or ends must, therefore, be taken out of the physical world. They cannot belong to the technological process as such.

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The article presents the author's insights on a book whose title is erroneously given as "Progress of Psychology," edited by doctor Baumgarten. The author says that the book has included facts and ideas on the development of psychotechnology worldwide. It notes the potential of the book in promoting applied psychology in countries where it was first developed. Meanwhile, it mentions the capability and influence of the U.S. in disseminating scientific knowledge through its publications inside and abroad.

The article proposes a theory of traditional society where continuing technical progress is occurring. The theory presents a general model of society, and deals with interrelationships among elements of the physical environmental, social structure, personality, and culture. Economic growth has everywhere occurred interwoven with political and social change. The author believes that the economic growth does not occur first and causes the political-social change. Both are mutually dependent. The author presents the case of traditional agriculture society. The typical characteristics of traditional society are: the social structure is hierarchical and authoritarian in all of its aspects--economic, political, and religious; and one's status in the society is inherited. These characteristics of the society as well as its techniques of production are traditional and change very slowly. An important factor initiating change was some historical shift which caused some group or groups of the lesser elite, who previously had had a respected and valued place in the social hierarchy, to feel that they no longer were respected and valued. This derogation in some societies consisted of explicit indication of contempt for the functions or position of the lesser elite.

The article focuses on the factors that have affective the technical progress in the cutlery trade in Sheffield, England. The industry is consist of producers of knives of all kinds and razors and has always been made up of many small independent working units. In a situation like this, there is inevitably a problem of communication technical information from a central position like a research association. The complex interaction of the firm exists within the industry an efficient grape vine which passes on information about the industry's activities. Furthermore, cohesiveness of the group is also one factor that aids communication within the association firm.

The article focuses on the issues concerning the aspect of communication on the technical process of psychological research or investigations. When the psychologist who works in industry, he becomes aware of the truth and wishes to communicate the findings of his research. If the facilities for carrying out research are limited, the psychologist has the access to reports of work carried out elsewhere and he may have two tasks of communication. These obligations include the concern with conveying the results of the research and the other with pointing out the relevance of work done in other firms.

Our main objective is to demonstrate that there is only one "nice" way to measure technological change. Along the way, the unique "nice" measures of several other economic variables will be exhibited. We present axiom systems for indexes of several economic variables: inputs, outputs, prices, wages, inflation, and technological change. In addition to conventional smoothness and proportionality conditions, in each case an Invariance Axiom is proposed. For technological change this says, in a sense, that when there is no technological change there is no change in the index. One can prove that in each case there is a unique index satisfying the axioms, and this is a Divisia index. Since these continuous indexes are not generally independent of the path, the problem of how often to change index weights may be viewed in the light of a choice between invariance and independence. We show that the unique invariant measure of technological change is a natural generalization of Solow's measure to the case of many commodity types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The information explosion is frequently characterized as the hallmark of, and even the driving force behind, recent cultural change. The fact that a good number of social ills stemming from the presence of monopoly and monopsony power in the political economy are handled by subsidies in the market for information stands as mute testimony to the pervasiveness of this phenomenon. Subsidies in the information market have an enormous impact in affecting the participatory revolution manifested in all forms of social protest, including ecological protest, simply by changing the attitudes of consumers, voters, and lawmakers. While the benefits of new technology are heralded in modern folklore, there persists at the same time a residue of romantic, pastoralist hostility to technological change. The Competitive Ethic is a lable attach to the set of shared values that legitimacy to the modern corporate state and supercorporation. The information explosion simultaneously increases the ability to learn to cope with the stresses of technological change as man adopts new ways of satisfying his basic needs for privacy, participation, relaxation etc.

The emphasis of the paper is on the determinants of total factor productivity in the U.S. economy (with only a limited discussion of the productivity changes in the various industries). No attempt is made to discuss explicitly the research related to short-run factor productivity (short-run employment functions) and international comparisons of factor productivity. 1 Interested readers are referred to the important works on technological change and factor productivity: M. Brown [15, 1956], J. Kendrick [78, 1961], L. Lave [86, 1966], and the NBER volume The theory and empirical analysis of production functions edited by M. Brown [16, 1967]. The plan of the paper is as follows. Section I comprises a preliminary review of the indices of productivity, some empirical evidence, and a brief discussion of the forces which may govern the behavior of productivity changes. Two major topics are covered briefly in Section II: (i) the problems of aggregation underlying the aggregate production function, and (ii) some theoretical issues on the nature of technical change and problems of its diffusion. These topics are discussed both to indicate the types of dynamic factors involved in shaping the course of productivity movements, and also to consider the forces which are generally abstracted from in the discussions of total factor productivity and the aggregate production function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author describes the challenges to the accounting profession in this article. He provides an insight to the background of accounting, the necessity of recording the terms of business transactions and the development of accounting techniques. He illustrates the increase in number of public accountants and the development of accounting as a profession with quotations as to the definitions of a profession. Discussing current challenges faced by the accounting profession he divides them into two categories which are the challenges within the profession and those initiated outside the profession. He further divides the outer challenges into two divisions which are, those which arise through technological changes in methods of recording and those which are enforced through the action of some who would take over certain segments. The author describes how more people can be encouraged to adopt the accounting profession and discusses questions related to certified public accountant certificate (CPA) examinations. He also describes the standards of education and experience for CPA candidates, the sphere of activities of a CPA and the formulation of accounting principles and standards of reporting.

In considering the organization as an aspect of technological development, the existential conditions of an organizational structure are placed of necessity within a system of changes ranging from those of the task contents, which affect an individual worker, to complex integrations, which affect whole industries and are carried across national boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to present an articulate framework for the study of the effects of technological progress which considers the organizational changes within an integrated system of other changes. The framework is restricted in that it traces the effects of technological changes up to the gross organizational level of technology. The framework for the study of production organizations presented here concerned the relationship of the production context to the task and interpersonal relations in industry. Key concepts of the socio-technical approach were explicated and a model of work relations outlined. An empirical study given as an illustration of the approach had shown that a change from batch to flow production resulted in a change in the criteria of workers relations.

Research and technology have produced some remarkable improvements in dyeing and finishing in a relatively short time. The author, the 1970 recipient of AATCC's OIney Medal for outstanding achievement in textile chemistry, traces several of the more notable advances and offers some recommendations for future growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IN a recent article, R. A. McCain (1972) investigates steady-state growth with induced bias in technical progress in a two-sector model. He mentions stability only briefly, saying that" it appears that no general statement may be made about stability in this model" (p. 931). In this paper we investigate stability of a simpler model than McCain's, in which there can be no short-term substitution in production. At any one time there can only be one ratio of capital to labour in each sector. The rate of interest is assumed constant and is determined outside our model (cf Kennedy (1964)). We have, then, a simple Leontief type model producing a capital good and a consumption good. The infinitely durable capital good is used as an input in each sector, the consumption good is not, so that we have an input matrix [alpha[sub 11] alpha[sub 12] 0 0] and a vector of labour requirements per unit of output The two goods have prices (in terms of some unit of account) P[sub 1] and P[sub 2], the wage of labour is w and the exogenously determined rate of interest is r. In competitive conditions we have P[sub 1] = rP[sub 1]alpha[sub 11] + walpha[sub 01] which gives P[sub 1]/w = alpha[sub 01]/1 -- ralpha[sub 11] . . . . (1) Technical progress in the capital sector is governed by a Kennedy type (1964) innovation possibility frontier, fixed over time and exogenously determined, which relates the rate of labour augmentation a[sub 01] to the rate of capital augmentation a[sub 11]. [Note, for i = 0 and 1, j = 1, 2, a[sub ij] = -- 1/alpha[sub ij] d.dt (alpha[sub ij]).] The possibility frontier is a[sub 01] = g(a[sub 11]), and we assume that the frontier is concave to the origin, so that g' and g" are both negative for all a[sub 11]. Technical progress in the capital sector is "induced" by the maximisation of the reduction of costs in that sector, given the prices and the rates of interest. The cost of production in the capital sector is rP[sub 1]alpha[sub 11] + walpha[sub 01] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper in the ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Professor McCain has extended the theory of induced bias in technical progress to the two-sector case.[1] This extension is of very considerable interest in its own right. What may be of more importance, however, is that it points the way to an even more significant generalisation, namely to a multisectoral economy with many capital goods. The purpose of this paper is to undertake this further generalisation. I shall confine my attention to the properties of the steady-state solution, for the simple reason that the analysis of its stability conditions lies beyond my competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have tried to survey as comprehensively as possible, within the space permitted, the major lines of applied research pursued by economists on the subject of technical progress. The main conclusion can be summed up very briefly. Macro-studies of technical progress which seek to estimate the rate of technical progress as a residual component of the growth of output are fraught with aggregation and identification difficulties but almost invariably find technical progress as the prime determinant of the rate of growth regardless of the production function specified. Technical progress and advances in knowledge are not synonymous without some adjustment for increases in output due to movements towards known production possibilities, but even studies which make some adjustment frequently make "pure" technical progress the single most important determinant of the growth of living standards. For this reason alone the process of technical change is of vital interest. The reader of this survey may well have been struck by the apparent thinness of studies in this field as compared to macro-economic production function studies. While it is possible we may have missed some important "micro "-studies of technical change, we are nevertheless convinced that the general impression given is a fair one. The research we have surveyed is mainly American because most of the research on technical progress is American. In Great Britain there is obvious scope both for production function studies and for micro-studies which seek to examine the process of technical change in a disaggregated way. At present the evidence in this country and elsewhere seems to be inconclusive on such fundamental issues as the pay-off from research and the economic conditions most conducive to invention and innovation. If firm judgments are to be made on these basic issues, there is no substitute for more and more research both in the testing of general hypotheses and of the case-study variety. Data ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of this study was to compile estimates of technical progress for a large number of individual manufacturing industries in Australia, and to make some preliminary analysis of the factors responsible for, or related to, technical progress. Estimates have been prepared of average percentage changes in output, inputs, productivity, technical progress, earnings and prices in 54 industries over the decade 1949/50 to 1959/60. The unweighted average of these industries shows increases in output of nearly 6% per annum, in employment of nearly 2% and in capital of 5.9%. Weighted inputs grew, on the average, by over 4%, and technical progress was 1.66%. All these growth rates were widely dispersed, skew and leptokurtic. It is particularly important to note that the range of variation of technical progress between industries was substantial. From a regression analysis of the data it seems that economies of scale contributed a small part of the growth of output, and disembodied technical progress a larger part. Technical progress is positively, but not strongly, related to change in output, but there is little or no relation between technical progress and change in the capital stock. This again suggests that disembodied technical progress is of greater importance. There is a fairly close positive relation between technical progress and changes in productivity. Changes in earnings are slightly related to changes in productivity (between industries), but this effect disappears when output and employment are taken separately. There is little or no association between changes in earnings and technical progress. Price changes are positively related to changes in earnings and negatively related to changes in productivity, with the former influence apparently slightly greater. There is a similar relation, though not so good, between price changes, earnings changes and technical progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the implications of technological developments on the global changes of society. Assertions from scientists relating to the subject was noted. According to profesor J. K. Galbraith, modern developments in technology and industrial organization are leading to the fundamental changes in the nature of society. It is argued that technological changes had a number of profound influences on the economy. First, the developments make it inevitable that planning should replace market. Second, the complicated nature of modern industrial production means that many highly specialized processes and skills need close co-ordination in the modern industrial corporation. And more.

The article comments on the sociology book titled "Social Mobility," by Pitirim Sorokin expressing the view that intellectual progress and progress of discoveries and inventions are among the effects of vertical mobility. It argues that such generalization is only partially true and show that several oriental societies such as the Ottoman Empire which was characterized by great vertical mobility did not progress very fast. It concludes that not vertical mobility but its specific form channeled through industrial innovation creates technical progress.

The effort to establish the theory of technicways has involved the postulation of several differences between these ways of adjustment to technology and the traditional Sumnerian folkways and mores. The purpose of this paper is to elaborate one of these postulates, namely, that folkways and technicways differ with respect to their controlling power. Specifically, the present investigation concerns the mode and relative strength of the controlling force exercised over individuals by the folkways and the technicways. Wherever possible an attempt is made to establish a junction or correspondence of psychological and sociological factors in the control process. The psychological implications of social factors discussed here are perhaps only superficially explored. Indeed, in several places, the analysis penetrates little beyond the social level. The psychoanalytic approach is followed because of the many insights into social phenomena which it affords but chiefly because it offers a structure of personality compatible with social-cultural categories.

In one brief quarter century of technical progress has grown up the most formidable engine of mass control the world has seen. No more perfect art could be consciously devised to color the soul of a state. For good or ill it has acquired a power over the generality of men that the printed page, four centuries older, has never wielded. When it confines itself to the popular themes of romance and adventure, it may be trivial, vulgar, trite, sensuous, but the worst that can be said is that it moulds the surface habits of the community on a model of pinchbeck materialism. But when it steps, heavy-footed, into the province of historical fact, its play-things become social axioms that ramify in class, race, and national prejudice. Not only have scenarists and producers discovered this peculiar fascination of history manhandled ad hoc. Those in high places who wish to fix a pliant consciousness in any group have found a new tool. The Federal Immigration Service now places patriotic films in the steerage of the Atlantic liners.

The section of "Yarn Production and Properties" focuses on the technological progress made in the development of yarns from film sheets. The choice of polymer for textiles from film has fallen largely on propylene because of its cost effectiveness, strength ratio, its splitting ability and availability. It is stated that all extruded olefin films must be quenched quickly to achieve a crystalline structure suitable for the orientation phase. A new polypropylene material, Novolen, has been developed, which is said to give better physical characteristics than the basic polymer.

The section of "Yarn Production and Properties" focuses on the process of drawing and gilling in yarn production. In this section autolevelling as applied to drawframes is discussed. Faster speeds in drawing and gilling have introduced problems of web control and fly liberation that are being solved by the development of special guides and air-cleaning systems. Developments recently in roller-drafting have been mainly in mechanical refinement rather than in technological improvement. A drafting system developed by Toyoda company consists of four lines bottom rollers and five lines of top rollers, operating in two main drafting zones with an intermediate neutral zone.

The section of "Yarn Production and Properties" focuses on the technological progress in the textile industry. In the late 1950s and early 1960s fast development in machine productivity and shortening of the spinning process were made. The author informs that since then, basic technological progress has not been impressive despite significant advances in machine design. Shortening of the cotton spinning process was introduced in the 1920s with the development of the Casablancas high draft system. Some rapid improvements in techniques, technology, and machines were made in the next ten years.

The article discusses the study "Forty Years of Change: New Survey of London Life and Labour." The initial volume is designed to fill in the background of the major trends in economic and social change that have taken place in the interval between the inauguration of the survey by researcher Charles Booth and the undertaking of the present study. The chapter on transportation is richer in new insights into economic and social phenomena than any other section of the volume. It presents a most impressive array of data showing the enormous increase in the volume of movement that has accompanied the unifying of the more established forms of transportation and the development of new ones. This same chapter on transportation poses under a new aspect the problem of the interrelationship of demand and supply. The extent to which technological progress has been associated with private enterprise has been indicated in the discussion of the chapter on transportation. Statistical tabulations and graphs are generously provided and well designed.

The scientists accustomed to dealing with technical problems is appalled by the difficulties that face the social engineers who are charged with devising methods for coping with complex social questions. Resolution of a technological problem involves few individual decisions. The resolution of social problems by the traditional method, by motivating people to behave more rationally, is a heartbreaking, frustrating business. The most successful feats of large-scale social engineering in the past have avoided the problem of changing human nature. The assumption of the founding fathers of the U.S., that political institutions must capitalize on, or at least circumvent, man's imperfections seems to me to be the only practical approach to eventual stabilization of the world order. One must devise social institutions that countervail each other in a manner that maintains the stability of the entire structure. The impressive example of social engineering embodied in the U.S. constitution appears to be still unavailable to the world at large.

The article focuses on the various obstacles that stand in the way of scientific and technological progress of the Latin American University. It urges on some effective steps to formulate the problem that hinders techno-scientific modernization in Latin America. The underdevelopment of the region has been slated as the main problem, and therefore assigns an important role to the university in the transfer of science and technology. One initial premise is that techno-scientific progress is an essential part of the process of socio-economic development. In the light of Latin American experience, it is by no means obvious that its underdevelopment can be attributed to the lack of incorporation of Western science and technology. This examination of the implicit premises stated at the beginning reveals that the problem of technological transfer cannot consist simply in increasing its volume. The adoption of the process of industrialization and development that had revolutionized other nations has been highlighted as an effective step in the development of Latin America.

This article demonstrates that the asymmetries to which Winston W. Chang refers to in his article The Neoclassical Theory of Technical Progress, result from the manner in which he defines the Solow measure of bias in the capital-goods sector.

The authors argues that a hypothesized set of stable or regularly changing aggregate supply relationships may be viewed as a historical summation of growth processes which in reality were played out at the microeconomic level. In the U.S., however, over the course of the nineteenth century the pace of increase of the real gross domestic product was accounted for largely by that of the traditional, conventionally defined factors of production: labor, land, and tangible reproducible capital. Over the years 1927-1967 the average rate of growth in the productivity of the conventional factor inputs has represented well more than half the growth rate of real product and has exactly corresponded to the rate of increase of per capita product. In our view, the offsetting relative shifts in the demand for more highly educated people derive from heightened needs for reliable performance of communication, coordination, and control functions in an urban society within which the organizational scale and degree of specialization have been steadily pushed upward to take advantage of technical innovations in commodity production. The historical conventional capital-deepening bias of technological progress, by exerting upward pressure on the real rate of return, in our view must have played some direct part in eliciting and maintaining the higher real savings rates established over the course of the century.

This article examines the neoclassical theory of technical progress as a shift parameter of the production function and the way in which technical progress affects such function. The examination of the effect of technical progress on the relationship between certain primal and dual variables which are derived from the production function and which include the input-output coefficients, the factor proportions, the marginal productivity, and the marginal rate of substitution. The most important type of neutrality is the Hicks-neutral wherein the relationship between the marginal rate of substitution and the factor proportion is invariant. The study aims to: (1) present some new basic sets of parameters associated in a two-sector economy producing both consumer and capital goods; (2) provide unified treatment on the basic relations between any two of the three measures of bias; and (3) discuss conditions for aggregate neutrality. Finally, it is assumed that the production functions are linear homogeneous and that inputs are paid according to competitive imputations.

The article presents discussions by economists on some papers that are published in the May 1, 1970 issue of the journal "American Economic Review." The author states that one of the greatest obstacles to the efficient pricing of communication services seems to be a wide gap between costs of service of established common carriers and costs of facilities embodying the most modern technologies, which are microwave radio, satellite and the newest coaxial cable. Economist Harvey J. Levin's paper, published in the present issue of the journal, reminds its readers that this generalization applies clearly only to the comparison of private costs, until opportunity cost of the spectrum, that the first two of these new media use, is taken into account. Without them one cannot be sure how great is their margin of superiority in terms of social costs. But even with this correction, the rate of technological progress in long-distance communication has been so rapid that it has apparently outrun the rate of depreciation permitted by regulatory commissions on existing facilities.

This article attempts to shed light on the nature of technological progress and of the technologically progressive firm. Some telling characteristics of such firms are specified and some special problems faced by economists who seek to analyze them are described. Most of the article is devoted to discussing aspects of models of technologically progressive firms. It attempts to put forth some perplexing economic problems posed by technologically progressive firms and asserts that the solution to these problems will ultimately depend on producing a theoretic abstraction of large modern corporations. A fully developed model would allow for the following: 1. The determination of firm policy by more than one actor or set of preferences. This might be accomplished by dividing entrepreneurship into a risk-bearing function and a technical decision-making function 2. An explicit treatment of the choice of a production technique for intertemporal trade-offs in production to establish a long-run planning function. 3. The possession of property rights over changes in technology. 4. The determination of the firm's financing. 5. The determination of the firm's promotion expenditures. By explicitly allowing for taste changing capabilities and the productivity of new products on taste alteration, the article suggests that an additional aspect of technological progress can be handled.

The article focuses on the role of education in the process of technological diffusion and economic growth. According to the author, certain kind of education equips a person with skills to perform certain functions. The author proposes that functions should be ranked on the basis of the need for adaptation to change or learning in performing them. The author claims that the marginal utility of education can remain positive only if the technology is always improving. He suggests that production management in a technologically progressive economy is a function requiring adaptation to change.

The usual aggregate production function model can be shown to commit its users to the assumption that the relative prices of capital goods and consumption goods are independent of their outputs, and change over time only as a result of a difference between the rates of technical progress in the investment sector and the consumption sector. For the purpose of this argument the output of the investment sector is measured in "efficiency units" of capital, where an efficiency unit of capital or labor is that amount which is a perfect substitute for a standard unit produced or performed in a given base period. Technical progress is assumed to take the form of a Hicks-neutral increase in the output of given numbers of efficiency units of capital and labor so defined. The rate of "embodied technical progress" used by Solow and Phelps in discussions of the effect on short-run and long-run growth of an increase in the fraction of income invested, and in calculations of the "rate of return," must be interpreted as the excess of the rate of technical progress in the investment sector over that in the consumption sector. There is no reason in principle why this should be positive. Only on special assumptions does this interpretation correspond to the common-sense notion of capital-embodied technical progress as the development of new models of capital goods, as contrasted with unembodied progress as the development of new methods of producing goods of a given type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the impact of arm reduction on research and development (R and D) in the U.S. Arm reduction would have major impact on the size and allocation of R and D effort. There are two conceptually distinct reasons. One is the familiar problem of frictional unemployment. The second is rather special and is related to the nature and role of R and D in a basically free enterprise economy. Research and development is an activity yielding a large crop of external economies. A significant cutback in R and D could retard the rate of technological progress in economy and might present a socially undesirable reallocation of resources. A disarmament program would provide an unmatched opportunity to review public policies toward nonmilitary R and D. There are urgent needs for more R and D in areas where private incentives and financial capabilities are weak. Government support might be given to enlarged research programs in such fields as urban transportation and housing. Policies to encourage more basic research might be considered. The freeing of R and D resources could be one of the most important economic benefits of disarmament. Because the uses of the R and D resources which would be freed by disarmament are so important and so many, in this field, certainly, the economic benefits of disarmament would dwarf the problem.

The article presents a discussion related to technical progress, capital formation and economic growth in the U.S., a paper written by Edward Denison. Denison has tackled the question in more specific terms by stating his opinion that without any change in policies, except those needed to maintain fairly full employment, the growth rate would be quite high for the economy of the U.S. Denison's computations are therefore not merely an academic exercise in applied growth theory but they are actually used in evaluating the feasibility of that objective and considering policies needed to achieve the objective. Denison himself believes that such an increase in the rate of growth could be achieved if the nation considers that it is an important objective. Denison has made an arithmetic allowance for the effect of starting from a below full employment level. This effect is obviously small spread over a twenty-year period. Some of the changes which Denison believes require far-reaching policy measures would result from continuing a full employment expansion in aggregate demand.

The article discusses how much fixed investment is necessary to support alternative rates of growth of potential output in the U.S. in the near future. The author believes that a high rate of capital formation is required if the growth of aggregate productivity and output is to accelerate. The relation between investment and output is two sided. Whether any particular required rate of investment will be accompanied by a high enough level of final demand to use the resulting capacity is another question. And how a particular required rate of investment can in fact be induced is yet another. The data differ a little from those normally used in this kind of enterprise. It is assumed that all technological progress needs to be embodied in newly produced capital goods before there can be any effect on output. A sharp distinction is drawn between actual output and potential output, and the method includes a built-in estimate of the gap between them. The next section of the paper sets out the assumptions of this approach.

If the fear of technical progress is justified it seems that automation is the least to be feared among the many episodes of change human society has endured. It is likely to produce fewer untoward consequences even in terms of displacement, much less unemployment, than any previous set of new techniques. The 1950s seems to be as worried about automation as the twenties were about mechanization. Much of the automation is the simple consequence of a rising stock of capital. As capital increases, wage rates rise. As they rise, it pays the individual firm to shift to capital-intensive techniques, which were not previously economic. From the point of view of the firm, the wage rise makes the shift economic and forces it. From the point of view of the economy, the rise in the quantity of capital makes it possible and desirable. Some capitals saving techniques are now being applied which are recent inventions. That is, the production function in some industries has shifted. Automation in these is the consequence of recent inventions rather than of shifting relative prices of labor and capital.