Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840–1910

Abstract

Technological change has come to absorb an increasing share of the attention of the economist in recent years. Several attempts have been made to assess the quantitative importance of technological change, as opposed to increases in factor supplies, in accounting for the secular rise in per capita incomes in the United States. It appears, in all these studies, that technological changes (shifts in the production function) have been far more important than has the mere growth in the supplies of capital and labor inputs, as conventionally measured (movement along an existing production function). In a sense, this should be cause for deep concern, since the comparative neglect of the process of technological change (with the major exceptions until very recent years, of the works of Marx, Schumpeter, and Usher) suggests a serious malallocation of our intellectual resources. If the studies of such people as Abramovitz and Solow are even approximately correct with respect to orders of magnitude, then the contribution of technological change to rising per capita incomes absolutely dwarfs the contribution from a rising but qualitatively unchanging stock of capital. It would appear that we have indeed been playing Hamlet without the Prince.