Technological Change in the Agriculture of the United States and Australia

Development of Soviet Agriculture under a Vintage Model of Production

“…William McD. Herr [14] also implies that physical capital may be an important carrier of technical advance.…”

“…It may be useful to recall here that there have been changes in: commodity prices, prices of inputs, tax and procurement procedures, pressure to change the size of private plots and private holdings of livestock, the age-sex composition of the labor force, size of the collective and/ or state farms, importance of state farms relative to collectives, the internal organization of state and collective farms, planning procedures and autonomy of the collectives, credit policy, labor input norms for the socialized sector (in effect setting maximum time permitted on the private plots), the basis for sales of feed grains and concentrates to households, the differentiation of procurement quotas by region, the official attitude toward and setting of conditions surrounding operation of collective farm markets, and so 12 The contributions of the declining Ii and the quality of fixed capital are computed as dX(-~a)/l+X(-~a), and dx, respectively. 13 See [4J for a discussion of the relationship between the rate of growth of a capital stock and its age, 14 Students of the Soviet economy generally seem to agree that other sources, including economic policy changes, could substantially affect productivity as usually measured. David Granick [12, p. 2561has argued effectively that organizational change may have had a marked impact on productivity in the Soviet economy.…”