The U.S. Productivity Slowdown and Its Relation to the Inflation Problem

[Introduction] Numerous explanations for the productivity slowdown of the United States have been expounded by economists, business leaders, and politicians since it became painfully apparent in the early 1970s. With the imposition of a form of environmental regulation upon American industry in general not unlike that imposed by the Defense Department upon its contractors, the most connnonly given cause is government regulation. How else to explain the productivity slowdown

A Dynamic Theory of Competition

What is the relationship between competition and progress? It can be assumed that as of any given moment technologies provide different potentials for satisfying human desires. For example, it can be assumed that if Henry Ford had decided to enter, say, the pin making rather than the automobile business, he would have found in the former a lower potential: even if the elasticity of demand for pins were very high, there simply may have been no real opportunity to bring about a significant reduction in the cost. In other words, the potential as far as pin making was concerned might have been more or less completely exhausted. And if we assume an economy of pin mills, then obviously there could be little or no competition in ideas and no real progress

Ocean Mining Policy: A Dynamic Approach

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The Slowdown in Productivity Advances: A Dynamic Explanation

How is the slowdown in the U.S. rate of productivity advance (see Figures I and II) to be explained? Quite obviously, before it can be explained the principal determinants of the rate of productivity advance need to be known. Many people believe that productivity advances are quite automatic, and were it not for such external factors as regulation and inflation or the declining growth rate there would be no slowdown. But without knowing what determines the rate of productivity increase how can we be sure

A Dynamic View of the Economy

This paper argues that U.S. productivity decline occurred because of some profound changes in the American economy. It is also argued that the same changes help to explain the economy's increasing inflationary bias

Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome

My talk will be divided into three parts, First, I will briefly describe the conclusions of the much publicized report for the Club of Rome: The Limits to Growth. Second, I will describe the model employed to make the calculations not so much from a technical point of view but to give you a feeling for the reasoning involved. And the last part will point out that though the model is extremely naive it nevertheless contains an important germ of truth

The Menu of Technology

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A Dynamic Theory of Regulation

According to the theory presented in this paper, economic regulation does not ordinarily result from market failure; nor does it ordinarily result from an attempt to divide monopoly profits among a smaller, rather than larger, number of firms. It results from a difference in utility functions with respect to both individuals and firms: for example, when older firms in an industry lose their taste for rivalry and are able to obtain government assistance to impose “order” on the industry