dagblog - Comments for "Innovation Trough + update"

Come on, first you should

Desider — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:23:43 +0000

Come on, first you should have your documentation digital, so you just "save as PDF" or even "save as PDF and send".

If you have the right kind of scanner tray, you put in a stack of paper and it scans directly to PDF, which you can then email without having to go through a busy signal and worry about page 17 getting crumpled on the receiving end.

And yes, I do this on a dirt cheap 4-year-old Samsung.

This just highlights that we have solutions even for SOHOs, but they're just not fully adopted even in the US. So somewhere in 10 years, when all the cassette players are mostly history, we'll have a bump in efficiency.

But not the one in the

Desider — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 10:20:33 +0000

In reply to Doctor Mom says: stay away

But not the one in the reading room.

Did you happen to read this?

Donal — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:13:53 +0000

In reply to There is no problem

Did you happen to read this? Did anyone?

This is way too much economics before lunch, but I think it explains where Tainter gets his assertions that our feeling that there is still a lot of innovation may be more a result of marketing than new invention. Econ is not my field, so I welcome constructive comments from those of you with more of an economics background.

I'm really, really tired of asking simple questions, or even complicated questions and immediately being accused of playing along with this crowd or that crowd. I'm fairly skeptical about everything, truth be told, so the likelihood that I'm playing along with anyone is nil. If you all want politically correct posts, I'll just write about tennis and let the world go to hell.

There is no problem

Obey — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:45:30 +0000

In reply to If no one thinks that

There is no problem referencing MFP. But there is a reason that it is usually labelled as the measure of our ignorance. That isn't a disparagement. It just says its a measure of how much increased output is not coming from an increase in inputs. So its a measure of the impact of innovation, along with a few dozen other factors, on productivity. So if you see a fall in MFP, you can't just infer that innovation is falling off. It could be improvements in education have plateaued (that's the most common thesis). It could be economies of scale have plateaued. It could be erosion of market regulation causing frictions. It could be a lot of things or, more likely, a combination of many things. Innovation could be going up for all we know. Its impact is so damn hard to measure. And MFP isn't remotely a decent proxy for measures of productivity-enhancing innovation.

I don't mean to be ornery here, Donal. It's just that this whole end of innovation meme the right is plugging is not something the left should be playing along on. They want to push the idea that, hey, this whole stagnation thing? We can't do anything about it, because it comes from long sweeping trends in innovation that we have no control over. Cowen suggests that stagnating median incomes, for instance, are stagnating not because all the wealth is going to the top 1%, but because someone took away our innovation mojo. Sorry, but its blatant bullshit. And you're just happily playing along here, with no empirical basis for it. Sure, maybe you 'can say what you like'. It's your blog. But you're getting upwards of 2000 hits pushing this crap. It's not right.

Just my opinion. peace.

If no one thinks that

Donal — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:22:41 +0000

In reply to Donal, my point was that the

If no one thinks that anymore, can you explain why someone who was on the Boskin commission, hardly a wild-eyed group, is still writing papers referencing MFP?

Donal, my point was that the

Obey — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:19:00 +0000

In reply to It's a fall off in

Donal, my point was that the Solow growth model was a THEORY that total factor productivity (TFP), rather than labor productivity, was supposed to be a better indication of future growth in output. And my chart was a debunking of that idea: 50 years after the fall-off of TFP, growth hasn't slowed at all - apart from the blip after 2008. So, sorry Solow, but TFP is obviously not a good indication of growth potential.

A very simple and obvious point.

So there is no falloff in productivity that needs to be explained by any innovation trough. You're positing that trough as a cause for a non-existent effect. THERE IS NOTHING THAT NEEDS TO BE EXPLAINED.

An equally simple point is that only Solow had the half-baked idea that the only third relevant factor - beyond labor capital and physical capital - could be ... 'innovation', so that a theoretical change in TFP with labor and physical capital constant would have to be the said innovation.

But no one else thinks that anymore. TFP may rise due to sectoral shifts in labor - from ag to industry, say - or improvements in education - more college grads and/or better technical training - or cultural factors like shopping habits, and it may fall due to union restrictions, environmental regs, work-safety measures. And since it is unclear what innovation's contribution to TFP is relative to all these other factors, even if you do subscribe to the idea that TFP is a good indication of growth prospects, then it is another huge blind leap of faith to ascribe the changes in TFP all and only to changes in the rate of innovation.

I agree. My point is the

kyle flynn — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 14:25:33 +0000

In reply to Actually the platform frame

I agree. My point is the balloon frame is the major innovation. The platform frame is a modification of the balloon frame -- an incremental improvement, that tinkers with efficiencies. It's not game changer.

Actually the platform frame

Donal — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 10:02:30 +0000

In reply to Your reference to the spread

Actually the platform frame required fewer hands, and supplanted the balloon frame decades ago. And some big builders assembled entire wall panels and shipped them to the site.

Your reference to the spread

kyle flynn — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 07:02:37 +0000

In reply to Well, it cuts both ways - the

Your reference to the spread of easy housing post WWII and that hotel in China remind me immediately of the Levitt development on long Is., around 1950. They were churning out 30 houses a day, assembly line style. Ignoring the GI Bill and other socioeconomic factors, and just zeroing in on the technological characteristics of what made "Levitt Town" achievable, I'm struck by your earlier suggestion of incremental improvements to innovation and Genghis's notion that the sweep of the effect is what matters.

Trace the tract house phenomenon back about a hundred years before Levitt to the middle of the nineteenth century. You'll find the advent of the mass produced wire nail, the framing square and dimentional lumber. These combined to create the balloon frame, which marked a departure from timber framing and fundamentally changed how carpenters made houses. In the decades that followed this major innovation, incremental improvements were integrated into the new technology such as pre-cut components, plywood, drywall, concrete. To finally arive back at Levitt's vision, the incremental changes of the platform frame, the slab on grade, the handheld circular saw and the monotony of slight variation were added to the mix. Presto. Millions of these two bedroom, one bath, picture window houses got built, and fast.

I'd argue we're still on the arc of the Balloon Frame innovation. It's the horseless carriage if the timber frame is the horse and buggy. As Genghis puts it, we're just tinkering with efficiency.

And as Quinn notes, we

Desider — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 04:25:21 +0000

In reply to Well, it cuts both ways - the

And as Quinn notes, we haven't even begun to really use speech-to-text, text-to-speech, all sorts of recognition, auto-translation, etc.

One of the reasons casualty rates in Iraq were so low was that field medicine and prosthetics and such has improved so much. Eventually will trickle down to general mankind, where greedy insurance agents will make it all unaffordable... the hope is that in 20 years we'll have balanced out this part, since technology and efficiency and knowledge really should be making all these costs drive downward.