The effect of technology and demand shocks on structural and industrial dynamics: Evidence from Austrian manufacturing.

In this paper we analyse the influence of sector specific developments in productivity and demand on net entry and employment in 19 industrial sectors of the Austrian economy. Based on the model of structural dynamics of Pasinetti, we develop an identification scheme that allows us to extract technology and demand shocks, by means of a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model with long-run restrictions. We study the patterns of productivity and demand shocks across industries by means of a principal components analysis and find that sectoral and macro-economic developments in demand strongly correlate, while this is not the case for technology shocks. Impulse-response analysis shows that for almost all sectors productivity growth rates experience an immediate increase to positive technology shocks while the hours worked decline as conjectured by Pasinetti. Finally, we use the identified shocks as explanatory variables in time-series cross-section regressions on net-entry and employment data. Both types of shocks are able to explain dynamics on the industry level in terms of employment and sales but not firm dynamics.Industrial dynamics, structural change, technology shocks, demand shocks, entry and exit, employment

The Technological Bias in the Establishment of a Technological Regime: the adoption and enforcement of early information processing technologies in US manufacturing, 1870-1930

This paper presents a qualitative study on the adoption of early information technologies, such as typewriters, calculators or Hollerith machines in US manufacturing in the period between 1870 and 1930, which was by all means a true systemic innovation. Our empirical work is guided by a theoretical framework in which the theory of induced innovation is interpreted along "classical" lines in which an explicit link to the concept of technological regimes is established. We show how the presence of a distinct bias in technical change in US manufacturing led to the opening of a window of opportunity for early information technologies. We work out how the presence of this bias influenced the technological search and adoption process of firms and how this found its final reflection in the rules and heuristics of the regime, as well as the technological trajectories of the technologies. The reliance on established practices led organisation designers to cast the logic of large scale manufacturing into the administrative organisation of firms. This required the convergence of technical practices. The resulting technological trajectories and path dependencies were the outcome of the diffusion and the hardening of the early office work regime. Our analysis of US manufacturing data of the period suggests that even though electrification and "bureaucratisation" overlapped they cannot considered being the result of the same pattern of technology adoption, identified by the development of the capital-labour ratio.economics of technology ;

The creative response in economic development: the case of information processing technologies in US manufacturing, 1870-1930

This paper presents a theoretical framework along "Classical" lines in which Schumpeter's concept of "Creative Response" is linked to a theory of induced innovation and the concept of technological regimes. We devote particular attention to the role of indivisibilities between factors of production. On the basis of this framework, we study the adoption of early information technologies, such as typewriters, calculators or Hollerith machines in US manufacturing in the period between 1870 and 1930. We show how the presence of a distinct bias in technical change in US manufacturing led to the opening of a window of opportunity for early information technologies, and how the presence of this bias influenced the technological search and adoption process of firms and how this found its final reflection in the rules and heuristics of the new regimemulation is found.Technological regimes; systemic innovation; adoption of technologies; path dependence; information technology 1870-1930

The Impact of technology and demand shocks on structural dynamics: evidence from Austrian manufacturing

This paper examines the link between structural change between and within industries. We analyse the influence of sector specific developments in productivity and demand on net entry and employment in 19 industrial sectors of the Austrian economy. Based on the model of structural dynamics of Pasinetti, we develop an identification scheme that allows us to extract technology and demand shocks, by means of a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model with long-run restrictions. We study the patterns of productivity and demand shocks across industries by means of a principal components analysis and find that sectoral and macro-economic developments in demand strongly correlate, while this is not the case for technology shocks. Impulse-response analysis shows that for almost all sectors productivity growth rates experience an immediate increase to positive technology shocks while the hours worked decline as conjectured by Pasinetti. Finally, we use the identified shocks as explanatory variables in time- series cross section regressions on net-entry and employment data. Both types of shocks are able to explain dynamics on the industry level in terms of employment and sales but not firm dynamics.microeconomics ;

Complementarity constraints and induced innovation: some evidence from the First IT Regime

Technological search is often depicted to be random. This paper takes a different view and analyses how innovative recombinant search is triggered, how it is done and what initial conditions influence the final design of technological artefacts. We argue that complementarities (non-separabilities) play an important role as focusing devices guiding the search for new combinations. Our analysis takes the perspective of technology adopters and not that of inventors or innovators of new products. We illustrate the process of decomposition and re-composition under the presence of binding complementarity constraints with a historical case study on the establishment of the First IT Regime at the turn of the 19th century.research and development ;

Sectoral and aggregate technology shocks: Is there a relationship?

We analyze sector specific shocks in productivity and demand in 19 manufacturing sectors of the Austrian economy. Based on a structural vector autoregressive (SVAR) model with long run restrictions developed by Gali's (1999) we extract technology and non-technology shocks from sectoral andaggregate data and study their patterns and relationship by means of a principal components analysis. We find a close association of sectoral and macroeconomic non-technology shocks but only a very weak association for technology shocks. Impulse-response analysis indicates that for almost all manufacturing sectors and the Austrian economy productivity growth rates experience an immediate increase to positive technology shocks while the hours worked decline. We therefore confirm Gali's results on the level of manufacturing industries. Finally, we use the identified shocks as explanatory variables in fixed effect regressions on growth rates of employment, output and investment. We find that our shocks are closely associated to employment growth and output growth but not to growth in investment. The effect of technology shocks is different on the level of manufacturing industries and the aggregate economy. (A substaintially revised version of this paper is published in Empirica vol. 32 pp. 45-72)Economic growth, business cycle, manufacturing industries, technology shocks, employment, SVAR

Complementarity constraints and induced innovation: Some evidence from the first IT regime

Technological search is often depicted to be random. This paper takes a different view and analyses how innovative recombinant search is triggered, how it is done and what initial conditions influence the final design of technological artefacts. We argue that complementarities (non-separabilities) play an important role as focusing devices guiding the search for new combinations. Our analysis takes the perspective of technology adopters and not that of inventors or innovators of new products. We illustrate the process of decomposition and re-composition under the presence of binding complementarity constraints with a historical case study on the establishment of the First IT Regime at the turn of the 19th century.Technological regimes, systemic innovation, adoption of technologies, complexity,information technology 1870-1930

The Babbage principle after evolutionary economics

In this paper we analyse the cognitive roots of the division of labour and relate it to the reduction of tacitness in the organisation and technology of a firm. We study the interaction between efforts of knowledge codification and problems of control in production from an evolutionary and complex systems perspective. By applying our framework to the emergence of white-collar work in the late 19th century and the modern knowledge economy we assert that property rights and limits to codification of knowledge are important forces shaping the process of organisational and technological change.research and development ;

The Adoption and Enforcement of a Technological Regime: The Case of the first IT Regime

In this paper we explore the process of adoption and enforcement of a number of new information processing technologies, such as the typewriter, calculators, tabulation gears and book-keeping machines, starting from the 1880s in the United States. We show that their innovation and diffusion was inexorably coupled to the economic development in the USA in the late 19th century. It is a complex and contradictory consequence of underlying socio-economic processes that led to the formation of modern organisational structures in large scale manufacturing which required systematic and efficient information processing. The typewriter and all the complementary office automation devices that entered the scene shortly after were part of a socio-technical regime that started being established: the office work regime or as we prefer to call it the first IT regime, as for the first time a technology was set up to process information on large scale. The logic of large scale manufacturing to produce standardised products in large series and to apply labour saving techniques was cast into the organisation of administration. This required a convergence of technical practices. The lock-in to the inferior QWERTY-keyboard is hence the outcome of the diffusion and hardening of the First IT Regime.Technological regimes; adaption and enforcement of technologies; information technology; QWERTY

A typology of questions in Northeast Asia and beyond: An ecological perspective

This study investigates the distribution of linguistic and specifically structural diversity in Northeast Asia (NEA), defined as the region north of the Yellow River and east of the Yenisei. In particular, it analyzes what is called the grammar of questions (GQ), i.e., those aspects of any given language that are specialized for asking questions or regularly combine with these. The bulk of the study is a bottom-up description and comparison of GQs in the languages of NEA. The addition of the phrase and beyond to the title of this study serves two purposes. First, languages such as Turkish and Chuvash are included, despite the fact that they are spoken outside of NEA, since they have ties to (or even originated in) the region. Second, despite its focus on one area, the typology is intended to be applicable to other languages as well. Therefore, it makes extensive use of data from languages outside of NEA. The restriction to one category is necessary for reasons of space and clarity, and the process of zooming in on one region allows a higher resolution and historical accuracy than is usually the case in linguistic typology. The discussion mentions over 450 languages and dialects from NEA and beyond and gives about 900 glossed examples. The aim is to achieve both a cross-linguistically plausible typology and a maximal resolution of the linguistic diversity of Northeast Asia