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.
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