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This paper proposes that the specific pattern of innovative activities in an industry can be explained as the outcome of different technological (learning) regimes. A technological regime is defined by the particular combination of technological opportunities, appropriability of innovations, cumulativeness of technical advances and properties of the knowledge base. Building upon the distinction between Schumpeter Mark I and Schumpeter Mark II industries, this paper provides empirical estimates of the relationships between indicators of the Schumpeterian patterns of innovation (concentration of innovative activities, stability in the hierarchy of innovators and importance of new innovators) and indicators of the variables defining technological regimes.

The impact of technological progress on the labor supply is examined. The author presents a model that discusses how technology positively influences productivity gain while inadvertently causing employment reductions.

Product quality is found to deteriorate when new technology makes increased quantity possible.

The author provides an account of US economic growth during the 1960s-1990s. The effects of technological advances on industrial productivity, increase in consumer confidence due to economic stability, and growth of the middle class and its capability of raising the standard of living are discussed.

Research was undertaken to quantify the impact of technology on income levels and explain why some states are richer than others. It analyzed productivity across countries over time and data on research efforts, patenting, education and bilateral trade. The ongoing study is tackling the issues of the quantifying effects of innovations and diffusion to world growth, differences in R&D efforts across nations, global impact of national technology policies and the role of trade in technology transfer., Since at least the eighteenth century, much of the world has experienced ongoing gains in the standard of living, a process that Simon Kuznets labeled 'Modern Economic Growth.' Economists have [...]

We use a specific-factor model to examine the conditions under which policymakers are able to increase aggregate production of high-tech goods by production or R&D-subsidies in the short and long run. The difficulties for the policy-maker in designing a subsidy scheme that succeeds in expanding aggregate high-tech production involve taking into account the trade-off between resources used in R&D and production of high-tech goods, the relative impact of different R&D activities on productivity, and the ease with which resources may be attracted from the non-high-tech sector of the economy to the various high-tech industries.

Five physical units are proposed in recognition of the problem economists face in measuring physical capital in significant forms. The five units include energy consumption ability of production machinery, the calculation speed in information processing, volume and floor space of structures, acres of utilized land, and other raw materials valued in economic terms. The rationale for using such units is based on hedonic price studies on capital equipment which represent changes in technology.

A study was conducted to analyze the occurrence of convergence in 11 countries in Europe, namely, Denmark, Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, West Germany, Spain and the UK, over the period 1960 to 1993. The methodologies used included time series analysis to examine within-industry convergence and non-parametric analysis, or sigma-convergence method. Data demonstrated convergence from 1960 to 1973 but showed a switch to divergence after 1985 owing to changes brought about by information technologies., 1. Introduction The aim of this paper is to investigate convergence in labour productivity at the industry level across countries in the European Union. The research belongs to that part [...]

Comparison of producer surplus with definitive measures based on the profit function reveals potential problems with using changes in producer surplus to measure the benefits of some common types of technical change. Some illustrative applications indicate that the conventional producer surplus measures may seriously underestimate the change in profit induced by new technology, depending on the characteristics of the underlying technology which define the nature of the supply function, and the nature of the technical change. We provide guidelines for identifying cases where producer surplus will under-estimate producer research benefits, and suggest alternative measures.

Manufacturing modernization programs can help boost the strength of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies, according to adequate company-specific accounts. Furthermore, these programs hold significant possibilities. Manufacturing technology facilities, in terms of stipulated program evaluations and as parts of a place's technology framework, should be studied more closely.

A methodological framework designed to reengineer technological advancements that would allow the Philippine government to realize its vision of Philippines 2000 is presented. Philippine President Fidel Ramos cited the importance of technology in realizing a newly industrialized Philippines with more export gain in an information-intensive 21st century. The framework emphasizes on the governance of technological improvements that could enhance agro-industrial export potentials of the Philippines.

The growth in British industrial output experienced gradual acceleration during the period of 1700-1913. Three breaks are evident in 1776, 1834, and 1874 in the trend growth curve. Major technological innovations resulted in an immediate sharp rise in the output growth rate, only to be followed by a downward trend. However, there had been little indication of the path of growth process. The impact of major inventions, such as the steam engine, were hardly foreseen. Moreover, the full impact of such inventions on output growth were built over time.

Conventional literature on economic convergence has emphasized the formation of human and physical capital and has overlooked the role of technology and technology transfer. The importance of technology in economic growth is examined in a constant returns production function incorporating factors such as net capital accumulation, growth rate of technology and ability to absorb labor-augmenting technology. It was suggested that future research on convergence should emphasize various aspects of technology such as levels, changes, measurement and capital-labor ratios.

The association between firm profitability and the adoption of new process technologies was studied in a model incorporating data from 105 UK engineering and metalworking firms from 1983-86. The data was from surveys on technology adoption in Minimum List Headings industries conducted by the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies. It was concluded that there was a positive correlation between profit increase and technology adoption, that the profit increase is determined by rank and stock effects and that cost of technology acquisition was also positively related to the profit increase as a result of adoption.

A firm-level input-output analysis of information systems spending data from 367 companies with a gross output of $1.8 trillion dollars in 1991 was carried out to determine the validity of the 'productivity paradox.' The latter holds that corporate expenditure on information technology (IT) has not resulted in productivity improvements or firm output increases. The survey, which investigated several components of IT spending for the period 1987-1991, found an average 81% gross marginal product for computer capital. In addition, IT strategies also showed an impact on firms' earning power. The results, which contradict earlier studies, indicate that IT spending 'creates more value than' other types of capital budgets and suggest that the productivity paradox disappeared sometime during the period 1987-1991.

This article examines three issues. The first is the pervasiveness of technology use and the impact of technology use on performance in the Canadian manufacturing sector. The use of advanced technologies, particularly labour-enhancing ones, is found to be widespread. A strong connection between technology adoption and superior performance is also found. The second section examines the relationship between technology adoption and training in manufacturing firms. Firms using either labour-saving or labour-enhancing technologies are found to be more likely to train. The third section expands this analysis to examine how innovation-related strategies and activities are related to training. Innovation is found to be a key driver behind training in all sectors. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Work time data collected since 1856 from UK industries indicate that today's laborers work significantly less and have a longer lifespan than their predecessors. This is attributed by researchers to the advent of new industrial technologies that improved productivity and liberated work time and the development of household equipment that enabled women to increase their participation in the work force.

The effect of corporate innovation on market structure was analyzed in a two-equation model incorporating variables such as concentration ratio and intensities of research and development, advertising and capital. The data analyzed were taken from a Small Business Administration database which reported on 8074 innovations introduced in 1990. It was concluded that innovativeness is an endogenous factor which may restructure markets into industry concentrations.

Count data models have been developed to evaluate the dynamic and nonlinear character of technological innovation. Since such models apply non-negative integers for interest variables, they fail to explain innovation's dynamic feedback process and factors of unobservable heterogeneity. Companies having large market shares increase industry concentration but negate aggregate levels of technological innovation. Thus, dominant firms innovate more despite decreased market share.

We consider the classic equipment replacement problem under Markovian deterioration with the additional feature that the replacement technology is subject to change via a breakthrough. First, we examine the interaction between deterioration and technological change and derive some general properties regarding this relationship that can be used to rule out some suboptimal actions. Next, we show that although the possibility of a breakthrough does act as inducement to keep the existing technology longer in certain circumstances, this is not generally the case. Finally, we present an algorithmic forecast horizon approach to determining whether or not to keep the present piece of equipment that makes use of a finite amount of future forecasted data. We demonstrate that our approach, which is specifically designed for this problem, is both simple to implement and more 'efficient' than existing general purpose approaches, in the sense that the forecast horizons generated are shorter., Traditional equipment replacement models typically assume that deterioration, which causes either increasing operating costs or increasing probability of failure, is the primary motivation for replacing existing equipment (see Barlow, Proschan [...]

A present value index model was developed to differentiate between the effects of radical innovation and incremental improvement on technological progress. The model was used to compare the return from an initial-radical-process innovation and the return from incremental changes in petroleum refining processes. The results showed that incremental improvements gave higher returns than initial innovations. The implications for conventional R&D strategies of manufacturing companies are discussed.

Technological change has largely been responsible for the rapid increase in industrial and economic productivity in the US and other developed countries. Studies on the role of technology change and its effects on competition in the service industries, however, has been limited compared to the extensive research on manufacturing industries. Although advances in manufacturing research have always been at the forefront of restructuring and technological change, emphasis should be given to technological change in the service industries since these play an important role in economic restructuring and regional development processes.

The adoption of flexible manufacturing confers performance advantages to firms. Analysis of data from manufacturing firms in six industries in Western new York indicates that new technology led to increases in exports, total sales and value-added. Moreover, flexible manufacturing systems were found to result in different forms of commercial and technical benefits across different sectors. Process innovators were divided into those who adopted new technology to cut unit costs, and those who sought production flexibility. The regional development implications of the results are discussed.

The slowing of productivity growth in the 1970s and 1980s caused some economists to find a diminishing return to technological innovation. This interpretation is not necessarily accurate. The range and quality of the data used in the interpretation limit the quality of the analysis. Other economic fields are also constrained by the quality of available data.