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Technological Adaptation in Canadian Manufacturing, 1900–1929

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Peter J. Wylie
Peter J. Wylie
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Economics, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada K9J 7B8.
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Abstract

This article estimates biases to technical change in Canadian manufacturing from 1900 to 1929, and compares these to estimates of biased technical change in U.S. manufacturing. Significant differences are found between similar industries in the two countries, indicating that Canadian manufacturers did not use U.S. technology in unaltered fashion, but adapted it to be more cost efficient under Canadian factor market conditions.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 569 - 591
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1989

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References

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25 In order to draw this figure, I assume separability between the primary inputs (labor and capital) and the energy inputs (electricity and coal). Separability implies that the marginal rate of substitution between labor and capital is unaffected by changes in the usage of electricity or coal and vice versa. This is not an assumption employed in the later empirical work in this article.Google Scholar

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34 The empirical methods are explained in detail in the Appendix. Canadian factor share and factor input data for each manufacturing sector and their sources are explained in a data appendix available on request from the author.Google Scholar

35 The seven industries I consider are those for which I was able to obtain the necessary data but are also those most closely associated with the second industrial revolution in Canada. These industries were a large and growing proportion of the Canadian manufacturing sector, accounting for 24.6 percent of manufacturing output in 1910 and 35.5 percent in 1929.Google Scholar

36 The results rest on the same assumption that the factor substitution possibilities estimated by Woolf for U.S. industries were also available to Canada. Woolf estimated factor demand in these industries to be, predominantly, elastic with respect to own-price change. He also found factors to be, in general, elastically substitutable for each other rather than complementary. For his estimates of translog substitution parameters and elasticities of factor substitution in U.S. manufacturing from 1909 to 1929, see Woolf, “Energy and Technology,” pp. 142–48.Google Scholar

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