Management Matters

New indications of managerial innovations are created and then used to show that changes in organizational technologies are an important source of economic growth. Specifically, the analysis demonstrates that, first, in response to a positive managerial technology shock, output, productivity and hours significantly increase in the short run, second, these types of innovations are as important as non-managerial ones in explaining movements in these variables at business cycle frequencies, and, third, product and process innovations promote the development of new managerial techniques.Business Cycles; Productivity; Management techniques; Technical Change

Measuring Our Ignorance, One Book at a Time: New Indicators of Technological Change, 1909-1949

We present new indicators of U.S. technological change for the period 1909-49 based on information in the Library of Congress’ catalogue. We use these indicators to estimate the connections between technological change and economic activity, and to investigate the relationship between fluctuations in innovative activity and the Great Depression. Although we do find links between technological change, output and productivity, our results suggest that the slowdown in technological progress in the early 1930s did not contribute significantly to the Great Depression. On the other hand, the remarkable acceleration in innovations after 1934 did play a role in the recovery.Technical Change, Productivity, the Great Depression

Volumes of Evidence - Examining Technical Change Last Century Through a New Lens

Although technical change is central in much of modern economics, traditional measures of it are, for a number of reasons, flawed. We discuss in this paper new indicators based on data drawn from the MARC records of the Library of Congress on the number of new technology titles in various fields published in the United States over the course of the last century. These indicators, we argue, overcome many of the shortcomings associated with patents, research and development expenditures, innovation counts, and productivity figures. We find, among other things, the following: the pattern and nature of technical change described by our indicators is, on the whole, consistent with that of other measures; they represent innovation not diffusion; a strong causal relationship between our indicators and changes in TFP and output per capita; innovations in some sub-groups have had a greater impact on output and productivity than others and, moreover, the key players have changed over time. Our indicators can be used to shed light on number of important issues including the empirical relationship between technology shocks and employment, the role of technology in cross-country productivity differences, and the part played by technological change in growing skills premia in the U.S. during the last few decades.Business Cycles, Technical change, productivity, measurement

The Freedom Collection 2017–2021: Part 1, The Composition of the Freedom Collection and UNCL’s Downloads by Member and Subject

With data provided by a colleague, the author looked at the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries (UNCL) downloading activity of Elsevier\u27s Freedom Collection for the 2017-2021 interval. Members include the University of Nebraska at Kearney, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Nebraska Medical Center, and University of Nebraska Omaha. The author looked at activity by member and by subject at the level of journals\u27 Library of Congress Classifications. This report was submitted in the fall of 2022 to the UNL Libraries Collections Strategies Committee (CSC) and to the members of the Collections Strategies and Open Scholarship (CSOS) department

Read All About it!! What happens following a technology shock?

Existing indicators of technical change are plagued by shortcomings. I present here new measures based on books published in the field of technology that resolve many of these problems and use them to identify the impact of technology shocks on economic activity. They are positively linked to changes in R&D and scientific knowledge and capture the new technologies' commercialization dates. Changes in information technology are found to be important sources of economic fluctuations in the post-WWII period and total factor productivity, investment and, to a lesser extent, labor are all shown to increase following a positive technology shock.business cycles, technical change, information technologies