[PEN-L:2736] Re: Re: 2 questions

[Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I'm not an economic historian, but isn't this period seen, from today's
perspective, primarily as one of capital widening versus deepening?  If
so, many technical improvements would be embodied in new capital and
would not show up in total factor productivity increases.  (That is, TFP
goes up when superior new vintages of capital replace old, but not when
Q/L rises as capital-intensive technologies are introduced for the first
time--right?)

Peter Dorman

On Sat, January 30, 1999 at 19:05:13 (-0800) Michael Perelman writes:
> I was just reading an article by Robert Gordon about the low total
> factor productivity growth during the late 19th C.  I know that this was
> a period of rapid technical change.  I suspect that the low productivity
> growth was an artifact reflecting the highly competitive conditions at
> the time.
>
> 1. Does anybody know of any work in considering the effect of
> competitive conditions on measured productivity?