ABSTRACT

The appropriate interpretation of these findings, and any associated policy implications, are severely limited by a number of features of the reported results. Firstly, ‘technology’ is often merely taken to be the unexplained residual component that cannot be picked up by various observables (see, for example, Bound and Johnson (1992), who treat technical change as the residual from a production function). Secondly, even where more concrete measures are available they are often poorly measured or suffer from problems of unrepresentativeness. Thirdly, whilst some have tried to draw international comparisons (e.g. Freeman and Katz, 1994) it is often the case that comparisons may be marred by data differences and concepts across countries.