The Contribution of Imported Technology to Soviet Growth

Alec Nove
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Alec Nove: University of Glasgow

Chapter 21 in Studies in Economics and Russia, 1990, pp 312-324 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This may look like an essay in destructive criticism. It is not intended as such. It will, however, express its author’s belief that we have here a question which cannot in fact be answered, other than in the most general terms. There are such questions in other branches of knowledge. Thus Sir Peter Medawar, eminent geneticist, commenting on attempts to measure the relative contribution of ‘nature and nurture’ to differences in intellectual capacity, asserts that ‘in my opinion it is not possible to do so’ (his emphasis),1 for the two interact in ways which makes it virtually impossible to separate them. Economic growth and its causes are issues on which thousands of pages have been written. One is uneasily aware, when using Cobb-Douglas functions, that investment embodies new technology, that the residual is what one cares to make it, and might as well be called the x-factor (‘x-efficiency’, including all and any improvements in productivity due to higher-quality management methods, improved labour incentives, better education and training, successful geological exploration, and so on, as well as technical progress). Growth retardation too can have multiple interacting causes: in the Soviet case the burden of the arms race, the need to seek higher-cost materials and fuels in remote places, more serious planning deficiences, weaker labour incentives and even increased vodka consumption could figure on a list which, if Gorbachev is to be believed, also includes serious lags in design and production of modern and efficient capital equipment.

Keywords: Technology Transfer; Technical Progress; Import Technology; Capital Equipment; Soviet Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1990
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-10991-3_21

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