Journal Article Usher and Schumpeter on Invention, Innovation and Technological Change: Comment Get access Paul R. Schweitzer Paul R. Schweitzer Department of Labour, Ottawa Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 75, Issue 1, February 1961, Pages 152–154, https://doi.org/10.2307/1883211 Published: 01 February 1961

FORECASTS of productivity changes are usually made by extrapolating time series. For individual industries productivity fluctuates widely from decade to decade1 and the extrapolation method is vulnerable. An alternative is to use leading series. In an earlier study it has been shown that a well-defined time lag exists in the cotton textile industry among the estimates of productivity from engineering data, plant data, and industry data.2 Leading best-practice series, unfortunately, are hard to come by. But the results have suggested a third alternative: the forecast of productivity changes in industries by studying the diffusion of more advanced technology among plants.3 The present paper is an attempt to develop and test a framework by which productivity changes may be deduced from cross-section plant data. The cross section provides the initial conditions concerning the technological mix before changes. A simple set of rules on innovation and diffusion, also suggested by the crosssection information, then yields the expected changes of the mix. The cross-section approach has many virtues. It is unconstrained by the existence and quality of historical series, and moreover a suitably designed sample also catches the peculiar characteristics of an industry at a particular time or in a particular region. The possibility of refinement is virtually unlimited. From a theoretical point of view the opportunity afforded for testing the behavior of individual plants is also invaluable. These merits are ranged against some equally conspicuous difficulties, the most important of which are probably the difficulties in introducing time variables and in interpreting the results.4 In this paper a simple method for ordering technologies is suggested. After a tag is attached to each technology indicating its place on the scale running from obsolete to advanced, a rule of technology diffusion is introduced. In the third section the rule is applied to each of the two-digit Census Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) manufacturing industries in New England. The results forecasts of productivity, inputs, and outputs are evaluated in the last section of this paper. Although it would be desirable to use the model to predict the known data of some past year, the information at hand has not permitted such an endeavor without gross assumptions. It will therefore be argued only that the long-range forecasts based on the present model are reasonable and consistent in view of historical and present conditions

This paper investigates the factors determining how rapidly the use of a new technique spreads from one firm to another. A simple model is presented to help explain differences among innovations in the rate of imitation. Deterministic and stochastic versions of this model are tested against data showing how rapidly firms in four industries came to use twelve important innovations. The empirical results seem quite consistent with both versions of the model

I. Introductory: statements by Wallich and others of the inapplicability to the underdeveloped countries of Schumpeter's theory of economic development, 422. — II. Criticism of the contrasts drawn between the underdeveloped countries and Schumpeter's model as to the motive force of development (governments, not private entrepreneurs) and the goals of development (public good, not private gain), 424. — III. And as to the method of development (assimilation, not innovation), 433. — IV. Consideration of the significance of the international demonstration effect, 438. — V. Criticism of Bonné's complaints of the limitations of Schumpeter's conception of economic development, 440. — VI. Account of the reasons for Schumpeter's self-imposed limitations, 445. — VII. Summary and conclusion, 447

This article focuses on the managerial accounting. Many textbooks which make some claim to the managerial approach are organized in much the same way as they have been for the past twenty years. The bookkeeping cycle and type of bookkeeping records are described in detail, the variations in the particular techniques applicable to different types of business situations are considered, and valuation and classification of different items for statement purposes are given considerable emphasis. The managerial aspects of the test are limited to some description of the use of ratios and comparative statements. Having attempted to describe managerial accounting and to indicate how it might be employed, the authors would like to offer some defense of accounting instruction as it has existed. Accounting instruction has been condemned in high circles because of its emphasis on techniques. The managerial approach, although described in rather vague terms, is offered as the innovation to cure the ills of accounting instruction. Certainly it can not be denied that frequently techniques have been over emphasized. Despite this over emphasis, however, the accounting profession has attained a position of importance in business, a stature that every one recognizes

T HERE is general agreement that nineteenth century was unparalleled in growth of large-scale production. However, fate of scale of production in twentieth century seems to be lost in a limbo of uncertainty. One investigator comments that the movement towards large-scale production is largely a nineteenth century phenomenon and had run its course by i890. 1 Another commentator holds that size is growing with great rapidity. 2 Yet again we read that long-term, general and pervasive increase in plant size throughout most industries has come to an end. I It is purpose of this paper to present some empirical evidence on changes in scale of production in United States manufacturing industry. By scale of production we refer to size of plant rather than size of firm. The very notion of scale of production implies a relationship between volume of output and unit costs. Where economies of scale bear upon questions of monopoly, problem is one of control of output. Hence, scale of production is measured in this paper by physical output per establishment. Indexes of physical output are available for United States manufacturing industry, permitting construction of indexes of scale of production as measured by an index of output per establishment.4 To measure scale by number of employees would tend to underestimate industrial expansion linked with labor-saving innovations.5 Similarly, trends in ratio of value-added or capital per establishment may diverge significantly from movement of scale. In addition, data from which indexes of value-added can be constructed are not available for a sufficient period of time to be useful while records of capital value are flagrantly unreliable in that they are subject to judgment of person making estimate and to vagaries of longand short-term fluctuations in prices. The interpretation of long-term movements in indexes of output per establishment as changes in optimal plant size need not be vitiated by assumption of an optimum range of output rather than an optimum point

T HE proposition has been advanced by Dobb that . . where wage-earners are strongly organized in trade unions, one might expect labour to succeed in obtaining a larger share of the product than elsewhere. ' While there are several alternative forms in which this hypothesis may be stated, only one such will be examined in this paper. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that labor's relative share of the income produced by manufacturing industries in the United States is, in some significant sense, positively correlated with the degree of union organization or, alternatively, with changes in the degree of union organization. The principal finding is that no significant correlation can be established and, therefore, it is concluded that the hypothesis must be rejected. While the results of this study, as it turns out, do not differ substantially from those of other research more or less closely related to it,2 the methods and procedures used are believed to be different and to possess at least some general validity. It is contended, therefore, that more credibility can be attached to the results contained in this paper than to those of related studies. In particular, the research design employed here incorporates two principal innovations. First, the data are those of individual industries rather than of sectors of the economy or the nation as a whole. Since it is neither the nation nor arbitrary sectors of it that have been unionized, but rather concrete, identifiable, individual industries, the use of data flowing from the latter would seem to be appropriate if one is seeking to isolate the impact of unionism on distributive shares. Second, the method is essentially one of employing a simple trend analysis to determine the intra-industry behavior of labor's share over the long-run. This is in opposition to the currently popular, but potentially misleading, terminial-years approach. There is no reason to expect a priori that any set of results obtained from a mere comparison of two more or less widely separated end years will not be vitiated by analysis of the data from another set of end years. Only in the case where the deviations from the trend are consistently small does a terminal-years approach appear to serve the purpose as well as a trend analysis. But since the trend must first be ascertained in order to determine the extent of such deviations, there would not seem to be any advantage in working only with terminal years. Because almost any result, depending only on the choice of years to serve as bench-marks, can be obtained by using this method, it would appear that no general validity can be associated with any particular finding.3 A trend