Small and Big Business

Steindl, Josef

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Document type:: Works

Collection:: Josef Steindl Collection

Title:: Small and Big Business: Introduction [carbon copy of the 2nd revision]

Author:: Steindl, Josef

Scope:: Typoskript, Durchschlag, 21 Blätter, mit handschriftlichen Korrekturen

Year of publication:: 1978

Source material date:: [04.1978]

Note:: Das Typoskript stellt die zweite Überarbeitung der 1972 neu verfassten Einleitung zu "Small and Big Business" (1945) vermutlich zwecks der spanischen Ausgabe des Buches dar. Die erste Seite enthält mit Bleistift festgehaltenen Seitenangaben, wo Korrekturen vorgenommen wurden.

Topic:: Firm and market structure

JEL Classification:: D24 [Production, Cost, Capital, Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity, Capacity] D43 [Market Structure, Pricing, and Design: Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection] L11 [Production, Pricing, and Market Structure, Size Distribution of Firms]

Shelfmark:: S/M.3.10

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.48671/nls.js.AC14446393

4 the decline in the capital-coefficient with size seems predominant. There are certain general factors which act in the opposite direction: An increase in scale (and consequently, markets) involves additional investment in transport and communica tion, power, etc., in short, an infra-structure increasing disproportionately more than the firm's capacity. The burden of this investment is, however, ordinarily not borne by the firms, but for the greater part by governments, although to some extent large concerns do provide such infra-structure investment (for example power stations etc.) themselves. This tentative picture of the problem can now be related to the historical development of the capital coefficient as it appears to most economists nowadays: The impression is that the capital-output ratio for society as a whole has remained 4) roughly the same over the decades. From the comparison of scale one might have ex£*ected it to decline since large firms have tended to replace small ones with the advance of technology. In so far as it did not this might be partly due to the above mentioned factor (increasing infra-structure etc.). There is, however, another explanation: The comparison of firms in a cross section and the development over time is not the same thing. Over time, the rail wage increases, and with it the value of a given output in terms of labour input decreases. 4) Simon Kuznets, Capital in the American Economy. Princeton 1961. Table 6, p. 80.

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