Trend and Cycle

Steindl, Josef

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Trend and Cycle

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, Konvolut aus zwei Versionen von "Trend and Cycle", teilweise identisch, nummeriert, handschriftliche Anmerkungen und Notizen, 10 Blätter und 9 Blätter

Year of publication:: 1988

Source material date:: [vermutlich um/vor 1988]

Language:: English

Description:: Trend, cycle, cycle problems, long run changes, utilisation, measurement of technical progress, technology and economic structure, excess capacity in the long run, Kalecki.

Note:: Versionen einer Reihe von Entwürfen zu "Trend and Cycle". Die letzte Version wurde post mortem veröffentlicht und vermutlich 1988 verfasst. - Beilage (63 Seiten): Industrial Output Section (Division of Research and Statistics): Capacity Utilization, Manufacturing, Mining, and Utlities and Industrial Materials January 1967-December 1984 with supplementary manufacturing data, January 1948-December 1966. Revised July 1985, Washington D.C.

Related work:: Steindl, Josef: Trend and Cycle. In: Mott, Tracy und Shapiro, Nina (Hrsg.): Rethinking Capitalist Development. Essays on the Economics of Josef Steindl. New York: Routledge 2004, S. 164-173

Topic:: Growth,cycle and stagnation

JEL Classification:: E11 [General Aggregative Models: Marxian, Sraffian, Kaleckian] E32 [Business Fluctuations, Cycles] E37 [Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles: Forecasting and Simulation: Models and Applications]

Shelfmark:: S/M.18.1

Access:: Free access

4 The question of measurement of technology has so far been treated A very ( Sahal 198 ) mainly on the micro-economic level by engineers sophisticated treatment is due to Devendra Sahal who deals with the development of the locomotive. The engineering studies suggest surprising continuities and regularities of the learning process, but the economists are still far from being able to integrate this into their own concepts or experience. 4.Technology and Economic Structure. For the greatest part technical progress proceeds in very small steps (Sahal).It is a process of learning which by its nature requires time and consists of gradual advance. In the course of this continuous development there occurs,however, from time to time a major advance, a jump as it were. This is normally embodied in a new type of equipment. This discontinuous change or ’’innovation” is the resulting sum of a large number of preceding steps which lead up to it. Equally, after the first pioneer has built the new equipment there is a long series of improvements,a process of learning to use the equipment, and a follow up process of gradual improvements in the product or in the process or in both. It should be noted that the discontinuity in the process of technical advance has not only a scientific-technical but also an economic-social and institutional side.The novelty meets the resistence of established institut ions;it it happens to overcome them it will be more or less disruptive. In fact the discontinuity is perhaps more important in society than in the development of technical knowledge itself. Since long run growth practically always involves technical change and occasional discontinuous jerks it will always involve structural change. This is a pretty large subject and I mention it here only to introduce certain amendments to my treatment of it in Maturity and Stagnation.In this book technical change was exemplified by the case of an industry in which innovation is introduced by one firm and subsequently spreads to the other firms in the industry, leading eventually to the elimination of some firms which are too slow to adapt and for whom there is no more room in view of the growth of the innovating firm’s capacity. This analysis, restricted to the pattern of change in a single industry,applies primarily to process innovations;it can be adapted to the case of a new product which is not so radically different that it involves the establishment of an altogether new industry.lt does not cover, however, the case of a radically new product which is produced by an entirely new and different industry and is not in very direct competition with the established products or services of other industries. In an indirect way it may sooner or later affect some of the other industries ( television versus cinema ), it may in some cases even lead to the disappearance of an old industry, but the function of competition in such a new industry will be taken over for the greater part by new entrants which follow on the heel of the innovator,who contribute to the gradual improvement and cheapening of the new product and who bring about in good time the lowering

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