ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the differences in US and Japanese levels of aggregate technology for the period 1952-1974 and discusses the methodology for the measurement of technological gap in nontechnical terms. It explains how Japan continued to narrow its technological gap with the United States throughout the postwar period and even succeeded in eliminating the gap completely, attaining slight superiority over the United States by 1973. The chapter describes the process by which Japan has caught up with the United States technologically within the analytical framework of aggregate technology. The economic concept of technological change is simply the notion that greater output can be produced over time with given levels of labor and capital inputs. The relative quantity index of labor input for the United States and Japan is developed on the basis of wage and manhours by levels of educational attainment for each country.
