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Technological Dualism in Late Industrializers: On Theory, History, and Policy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2010
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Underemployment in LDCs has been spreading from its rural habitat to envelop the cities. Demographic growth has been a major cause in many LDCs, but the prevalence of the phenomenon in LDCs experiencing rapid industrial growth since World War II has also focused attention on the sluggish growth of industrial employment and on the industrial technologies employed. Since new technology has been almost entirely of foreign design, a central dispute has been whether declining industrial labor coefficients reflect primarily faults in the selection mechanisms governing the choice of industrial techniques, or whether labor-saving trends inherent in advanced country technology are reducing the feasible range of choice for industrializing LDCs.
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References
1 Cortes, Mario M., “Technological Absorption and Unemployment: A Comparative Analysis,” Washington University, Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, 1973.Google Scholar
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3 Installed HP per worker was used in most Latin American comparisons for lack of capital figures by industry south of the border. Where alternatives could be compared, U.S.—Chile, the results are fairly close. Melman has found a similarly close relationship between K/L and HP/L at the plant level in his industrial engineering studies. See Melman, Seymour, Decision Making and Productivity (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), p. 152.Google Scholar
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See Cortes, “Absorption,” p. 93. The lowest third in 1958 in descending order were:
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6 The 2-digit industry findings are based on comparisons between U.S. 1954 data and Brazil (1960), Chile (1957 and 1967) and Colombia (1968). Of the 19 industries, only tobacco had a consistently higher VA/HP for almost all plant size classes in all three Latin American countries. Chilean chemical products and petroleum and coal products in 1967 were the only other industries with consistently higher VA/HP than U.S. 1954 equivalents, across all plant size classes. Exceptions in a few of the other industries are not consistent either as between plant size or countries. See Cortes, “Absorption,” Tables Dl, D2, D3.
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This growth in scale, alongside the successful application of concentration techniques and tendencies, produced in the manufacturing industries a new awareness of their strength and ability to control markets.… The shorter the supply lines the closer the producer is to his market and the greater is his control of product and market.” Stacey and Wilson, Pattern, p. 101.
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50 I owe the name and some of the features of the model to a seminar on Brazil given by Albert Fishlow. Since the seminar paper is not available at this writing, Fishlow shouldn't be blamed for any egregious errors in my version.
51 In Brazil the industrialists, landowners, conservative politicians, and nationalistic military, who helped bring about the 1964 coup (with some assistance from the U.S.), have been shunted aside by a smaller in-group of military and economic technicians for whom export-oriented industrialization by policies highly favorable to multi-national subsidiaries is the overriding priority.
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56 The obviousness is indicated by the fact that List was strongly influenced by Hamilton's Report on Manufactures, and Hamilton, in turn, according to the evidence of his King's College class notes, found most of his ideas in Malachy Postlethwaite's Universal Dictionary of Commerce, a mid-eighteenth century compendium of conventional mercantilist wisdom.
57 The importance of general literacy for this period remains one of the more controversial points. Lennart Jorberg's judgment for nineteenth-century Sweden is that there is “no proof that formal general education was a prerequisite or a main cause of Swedish industrial development. The educational effect of apprenticeship and promotion to skilled grades in ordinary economic life was probably more far reaching than sums of money spent on educational institutions.” See “The Diffusion of Technology and Economic Development: Scattered Remarks from Swedish Economic History,” presented at the Conference on the Diffusion of Technology and Economic Development, Bellagio, Italy (mimeo, April 1973).
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68 Sermons along such lines were read to the resisting Japanese officials by foreign diplomats, while the press commentary in the home countries expressed similar moral arguments less respectfully. For choice examples, see Beasley, Restoration.
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