Dissemination of Technology in Market and Planned Economies
-
Maurizio Iacopetta
Abstract
The Soviet Union was competing head to head with market economies in the generation of new technologies, not only in traditional industries such as steelmaking, electricity, and machineries, but also in high tech-areas such as synthetic materials and microelectronics. Yet its productivity performance was significantly worse than that of both developing and industrial countries. R&D-based growth models cannot explain this fact, as the Soviet effort in research and education was comparable to that of most advanced countries. I claim that a technology adoption model helps us understand better the Soviet experience. I hypothesize that the Soviet managerial compensation system generated an incentive for the manager to perform only a modest retooling activity out of fear of breaking the production norm that the planner imposed upon the firm.
©2011 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Advances Article
- Price Stability and Monetary Policy Effectiveness when Nominal Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero
- Contributions Article
- Aggregate Price Changes and Dispersion: A Comparison of the Equity and Goods and Services Markets
- Dissemination of Technology in Market and Planned Economies
- Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?
- Is the U.S. Aggregate Production Function Cobb-Douglas? New Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution
- What Does It Take to Explain Procyclical Productivity?
- Endogenous Distribution, Politics, and the Growth-Equity Tradeoff
- Explaining Speculative Expansions
- Tariffs, Entry Regulation and Markups: Country Size Matters
- Schumpeterian Growth, North-South Trade and Wage Rigidity
- Do Federal Reserve Policy Surprises Reveal Superior Information about the Economy?
- Bailouts and Bank Runs in a Model of Crony Capitalism
- Multiple Equilibria in Heterogeneous Expectations Models
- Topics Article
- Empirical Perspectives on Long-Term External Debt
- Output Gap Uncertainty and Monetary Policy During the 1970s
- The UK Household Sector Demand for Risky Money
- The Relationship between Stock Prices, House Prices and Consumption in OECD Countries
- Labor Market Performance and Flexibility: Which Comes First?
- A Simple Locally Interactive Model of Ergodic and Nonergodic Growth
- Do Minimum Wages Raise the NAIRU?
- Strictly Endogenous Growth with Non-renewable Resources Implies an Unbounded Growth Rate
- Creative Destruction and Policy in a Model of Endogenous Growth
- Intergenerational Habits, Fiscal Policy, and Welfare
- Output Composition of the Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism in Japan
- Socio-Cultural Variables and Economic Success: Evidence from Italian Provinces 1951-1991
- Monetary Policy and the Information Content of the Yield Spread
- The Dynamics of Fertility and Growth: Baby Boom, Bust and Bounce-Back
- Imbalance Effects in the Lucas Model: an Analytical Exploration
- Assessing Aggregate Tests of Efficiency for Dynamic Economies
- The Output Gap, Expected Future Inflation and Inflation Dynamics: Another Look
- Unions and Workforce Adjustment Costs
Articles in the same Issue
- Advances Article
- Price Stability and Monetary Policy Effectiveness when Nominal Interest Rates are Bounded at Zero
- Contributions Article
- Aggregate Price Changes and Dispersion: A Comparison of the Equity and Goods and Services Markets
- Dissemination of Technology in Market and Planned Economies
- Interest-Rate Smoothing: Monetary Policy Inertia or Unobserved Variables?
- Is the U.S. Aggregate Production Function Cobb-Douglas? New Estimates of the Elasticity of Substitution
- What Does It Take to Explain Procyclical Productivity?
- Endogenous Distribution, Politics, and the Growth-Equity Tradeoff
- Explaining Speculative Expansions
- Tariffs, Entry Regulation and Markups: Country Size Matters
- Schumpeterian Growth, North-South Trade and Wage Rigidity
- Do Federal Reserve Policy Surprises Reveal Superior Information about the Economy?
- Bailouts and Bank Runs in a Model of Crony Capitalism
- Multiple Equilibria in Heterogeneous Expectations Models
- Topics Article
- Empirical Perspectives on Long-Term External Debt
- Output Gap Uncertainty and Monetary Policy During the 1970s
- The UK Household Sector Demand for Risky Money
- The Relationship between Stock Prices, House Prices and Consumption in OECD Countries
- Labor Market Performance and Flexibility: Which Comes First?
- A Simple Locally Interactive Model of Ergodic and Nonergodic Growth
- Do Minimum Wages Raise the NAIRU?
- Strictly Endogenous Growth with Non-renewable Resources Implies an Unbounded Growth Rate
- Creative Destruction and Policy in a Model of Endogenous Growth
- Intergenerational Habits, Fiscal Policy, and Welfare
- Output Composition of the Monetary Policy Transmission Mechanism in Japan
- Socio-Cultural Variables and Economic Success: Evidence from Italian Provinces 1951-1991
- Monetary Policy and the Information Content of the Yield Spread
- The Dynamics of Fertility and Growth: Baby Boom, Bust and Bounce-Back
- Imbalance Effects in the Lucas Model: an Analytical Exploration
- Assessing Aggregate Tests of Efficiency for Dynamic Economies
- The Output Gap, Expected Future Inflation and Inflation Dynamics: Another Look
- Unions and Workforce Adjustment Costs