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This paper investigates the effect of firm size and ownership structure on technology adoption decisions, using data on the electric utility industry. We argue that traditional models of technology diffusion are subject to sample selectivity biases that may overstate the effect of firm size on adoption probabilities. By extending conventional hazard rate models to use information on both adoption and non-adoption decisions, we differentiate between firms' opportunities for adoption and their underlying adoption propensities. The results suggest that large firms and investor-owned electric utilities are likely to adopt new technologies earlier than their smaller and publicly-owned counterparts. Moreover, the selection biases from conventional statistical models can lead one to overstate size effects by a factor of two and to understate ownership structure and factor cost effects by two to four times.
Zvi Griliches, a world-renowned pioneer in the field of productivity growth, has compiled in a single volume his pathbreaking research on R&D and productivity. Griliches addresses the relationship between research and development (R&D) and productivity, one of the most complex yet vital issues in today's business world. Using econometric techniques, he establishes this connection and measures its magnitude for firm-, industry-, and economy-level data. Griliches began his studies of productivity growth during the 1950s, adding a variable of "knowledge stock" to traditional production function models, and his work has served as the point of departure for much of the research into R&D and productivity. This collection of essays documents both Griliches's distinguished career as well as the history of this line of thought. As inputs into production increasingly taking the form of "intellectual capital" and new technologies that are not as easily measured as traditional labor and capital, the methods Griliches has refined and applied to R&D become crucial to understanding today's economy.
One usually accounts for output growth in terms of the growth of the primary inputs: labor, physical capital, and possibly human capital. In this paper we account for growth with labor and with intermediate goods. Because we have no measures of the extent of adoption of most intermediate goods in most countries, we have to assume something about how they spread, based on what we see in U.S. data. We find that if all countries have (al the same production function, (b) the same speed of adoption technology, and (c) imperfectly correlated technology shocks, then we can easily account for the extent and persistence of inequality among nations. Unfortunately, while it easily generates the sorts of low frequency movements that we observe, our technology shock seems to have little to do with high frequency movements in GNP so that if our definition of this shock is correct, real business cycle models are way off the mark.
The productivity slowdown of the 1970s and 1980s and the resumption of productivity growth in the 1990s have provoked controversy among policymakers and researchers. Economists have been forced to reexamine fundamental questions of measurement technique. Some researchers argue that econometric approaches to productivity measurement usefully address shortcomings of the dominant index number techniques while others maintain that current productivity statistics underreport damage to the environment. In this book, the contributors propose innovative approaches to these issues. The result is a state-of-the-art exposition of contemporary productivity analysis. Charles R. Hulten is professor of economics at the University of Maryland. He has been a senior research associate at the Urban Institute and is chair of the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Michael Harper is chief of the Division of Productivity Research at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Edwin R. Dean, formerly associate commissioner for Productivity and Technology at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is adjunct professor of economics at The George Washington University.
A wide ranging contribution to the debate about the impact of technological change on economic and social welfare.
In 1982, Vaclav Smil turned upside down traditional perceptions of China as a green paradise in "The Bad Earth". Updating and expanding its basic arguments and perceptions, this volume is an inquiry into the fundamental factors, needs, prospects, and limits of modern Chinese society.
The 25 classic articles in this volume deal with the role of technological change in economic growth, the extent of social and private returns from research and development, the relationship between market structure and technological change, the controversies over intellectual property rights, the processes by which innovations spread, and the management of technology. This volume will prove invaluable to economists, managers and government policymakers.
New goods are at the heart of economic progress. The eleven essays in this volume include historical treatments of new goods and their diffusion; practical exercises in measurement addressed to recent and ongoing innovations; and real-world methods of devising quantitative adjustments for quality change. The lead article in Part I contains a striking analysis of the history of light over two millenia. Other essays in Part I develop new price indexes for automobiles back to 1906; trace the role of the air conditioner in the development of the American south; and treat the germ theory of disease as an economic innovation. In Part II essays measure the economic impact of more recent innovations, including anti-ulcer drugs, new breakfast cereals, and computers. Part III explores methods and defects in the treatment of quality change in the official price data of the United States, Canada, and Japan. This pathbreaking volume will interest anyone who studies economic growth, productivity, and the American standard of living.
This book presents a detailed overview of the economics of technological diffusion in all its various dimensions. Topics covered include: Game-theoretic approaches to the modelling of technological change Finance and technological change Technological change in international trade.