Induced Technical Change in Centrally Planned Economies

Shenggen Fan and Vernon Ruttan

No 7469, Bulletins from University of Minnesota, Economic Development Center

Abstract: It has generally been assumed that the inferences of the induced technical change model with respect to the direction of technical change could not be expected to hold for the centrally planned economies. In this paper we test three hypotheses generated from the induced technical change hypotheses against the experience of centrally planned economies: (a) if land becomes increasingly scarce new technology will be biased in a land-saving direction; (b) if labor becomes increasingly scarce new technology will be biased in a laborsaving direction; and (c) changes in the land-labor ratio have been induced by changes in relative factor endowments. The results suggest a bias toward mechanical and against biological technology regardless of factor endowments. This is consistent with the well known ideological or policy bias in a number of centrally planned economies toward a capital intensive development strategy.

Keywords: Research; and; Development/Tech; Change/Emerging; Technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21
Date: 1991
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Related works:
Journal Article: Induced technical change in centrally planned economies (1992)
Journal Article: Induced technical change in centrally planned economies (1992)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:umedbu:7469

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.7469

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