Technological change in Australian manufacturing

Bloch, Harry

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Authors

Bloch, Harry

Date

2007

Type

Conference Paper

Metadata

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Citation

Bloch, Harry. 2007. Technological change in Australian manufacturing, in Dr Paul Blacklow (ed), 37th Australian Conference of Economists, Sep 24 2007. Hotel Grand Chancellor, Hobart, Tasmania: The Economic Society of Australia

Source Title

Conference Proceedings of the 36th Australian Conference of Economists

Source Conference

37th Australian Conference of Economists

ISBN

9780959337013

Faculty

Curtin Business School

School of Economics and Finance

URI

http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/44344

Collection

Curtin Research Publications

Abstract

In the modern era, the extent and character of technical change features prominently in discussions of productivity growth and movements in the competitiveness of manufacturing. While technical change is pervasive in modern manufacturing, it occurs unevenly. In this study, technical change is estimated by fitting dual cost functions for each of 38 sectors of Australian manufacturing over the 32-year period, 1968/69 to 1999/2000. The estimates show that technical change is heavily labour saving in all industries, but that the rate of change and the degree of bias towards saving labour, rather than capital or material, varies substantially across industries.