Neoklasik iktisadın teknolojik gelişme yaklaşımı

Abstract

M SUMMARY IN ENGLISH Since the middle of the 1950' s, technological change has been the subject of considerable research and discussion in the western economic thought. The result of a number of studies made in the USA between 1955-60, was that about 80-90 per cent of the American economic growth had been due to technical progress and only very little could be attributed to capital accumulation. Hence it was suggested that a large part of the available resources of the society should be allocated to tech nical change. Later, in the 1960's, it was suggested that investment carried on the very important function of transferring innovations to eco nomic life since technical progress was embodied in new capital goods. Capital accumulation was thus once again given an active role in econo mic growth. Even though today among the western economists there is no gene ral agreement as to what is the real contribution of technical change to economic growth, it is generally accepted that technical change is an im portant factor thereof. In spite of this, to our knowledge this subject has not been studied in depth in Turkey. This study which aims at fining this gap includes an examination of the neoclassical approach to technical change and estimates the technical change in the Turkish ma nufacturing industry. The dissertation has three parts. The first part summarizes the the oretical aspects of the approach, and the secod part presents the econo metric techniques for the measurement of technical change, developed in the western economics. In the third part, the empirical study aimed at estimating the technical change in the sub-sectors of the Turkish manufacturing industry (two digit classification has been used and 20 subsectors taken in the private sector, but public sector has been divided only 4 sub-sectors). In the beginning of the first part, the definition and classification of technological change, the way it is handled within production functions, 279and the way it affects distribution is presented. Later, `induced` and `embodied` technical change are taken up in separate chapters. Part two is made up of two chapters. The first chapter gives a de tailed summary of studies, mainly in the USA, on the measurement of technical change with the neoclassical approach and the techniques de veloped towards this end. Chapter two of this part takes up the criticism of the neoclassical approach, mainly the `Cambridge criticism`. In the first chapter of part three which is made up of two chapters, the general characteristics of the public and private sectors of the Tur kish manufacturing industry are separately examined using growth ra tes, correlation coefficients and similar simple statistical tools. In the next chapter, the results of regressions applied to the data of the relevant section of our economy (1951-68) for the purpose of estimating technical change are taken up. The study terminates with chapter 11, the conclu sion. ` Some of the results of the empirical study presented in Part III can be summarized as follows. The public sector shows a much more significant technical progress than the private sector. On the contrary, economies of scale (increasing returns) is more important for the private sector. These results follow from the fact that the public sector is more capital intensive, whereas the private sector shows a higher profit rate. Even though the estimated rates of technical change differs from branch to branch, it is usually significantly high. When constant prices are used, more realistic results can be obtained. Generally, technical progress and economies of scale seem to be alternatives (they compete with each other). That is, in an industry, technical progress and economies of scale have not simultaneously been obtained. Elasticity of substitution is higher in the private sector even though it is lesser than 1 in both (private and public) sectors. 280