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Fri Mar 31 17:18:51 2006 |
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Thanks for the responses so far, especially to Richard Lipsey who got them
started. Richard's opening comments are so similar to those I have written
on this topic it is uncanny.
Why did my question regarding the origins of a concept so fundamental to our
'science' elicit no (initial) response? I began to wonder if it was because
of that very fundamentality. Technology has been broadly taken for granted
within society. Economists are no different in that regard.
Go to any undergraduate microeconomics textbook. What I am exploring is the
standard definition of technology: technology as the isoquant, the current
state of knowledge as to how to combine factor resources to produce goods
and services, with one particular combination considered a technique,
technical efficiency being how to optimise within the feasible set of
techniques, and technical change being an augmentation of these
possibilities over time.
The question I have now is: would anyone disagree that this standard
definition of technology, which we seem to take for granted (given its
textbook universality), is a Hicksian concept?
Im thinking 1932 here.
Cheers...
Adam McHugh
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