SEMAINE D'ÉTUDE SUR LE ROLE DE L ANALYSE ECONOMETRIOUE ETC. 
OZ Ii 
an industrial scale, which takes place through a much longer 
and continuous process. Moreover, it includes all the innu- 
merable series of expedients and devices, small if considered 
individually, but of great relevance if jointly gauged, which 
are the daily upshot of experience, experiments, research and 
of re-thinking of the productive organization. This is indeed 
a very complicated process, emerging from the learning activity 
of men and the application of this learning activity to pro- 
Juction. By its nature this process is, therefore, a slow but 
persistent one. It consists of long and repeated attempts not 
only to reorganize the old methods of production, to utilize 
more efficiently the new materials, and to improve the quality 
of the products, but also to invent and apply new methods 
of production, produce new products, find new resources, and 
discover new sources of energy. 
It would certainly be out of place to develop a theory of 
echnical progress here. If such a theory should ever be 
developed, it would pertain to a much wider field than econo- 
mics, because it could not avoid some definite conceptions about 
the aims and ends of human society. Therefore, as far as the 
present work is concerned, the usual procedure will be followed 
of taking technology as given from outside economic analysis. 
However, what will be taken as given is not a fixed technology 
but the movements of the technical coefficients in general 
through time. 
In this way, the concept of technical change which is 
adopted in the following pages will not be restricted by any 
particular assumptions (*! But in order to reach practicalr 
() It will cover the case of technical progress of any type and also 
the case of increasing or decreasing returns to scale. On the other hand, 
he case on ‘which neo-classical economists focussed all their attention 
‘a change of production methods owing to changes in the rate of profit) 
vill automatically not arise because in the present model the rate of profit 
remains constant as time goes on. 
101 Pasinetti - pag. 
57