IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/egc/wpaper/811.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How to Win Schumpeterian Competition: Technological Transfers in the German Plastics Industry from the 1930s to the 1970s

Author

Listed:
  • Jochen Streb

Abstract

Introducing the concept of innovation capital we will analyse conditions under which a national industry is able to succeed in international Schumpeterian competition. Then we will discuss the significance of this concept for the economic development of the German plastics industry from the 1930s to the 1970s. Using a repeated game model of technological cooperation we will especially focus on technological transfers from chemical firms to plastics fabricators. We will deploy both a microeconomic approach when viewing product innovations transferred by the so-called Kunststoffrohstoffabteilung (KURO) of chemical firm BASF, and a macroeconomic approach when looking at the development of total factor productivity in the German plastics fabricating industry. It will turn out that we can distinguish three subperiods with respect to technological cooperation in the German plastics industry: the beginning in the period of National Socialist dictatorship and post war reconstruction, the developing in the time of the West German economic miracle, and the ending in the decade of the two oil price shocks.

Suggested Citation

  • Jochen Streb, 1999. "How to Win Schumpeterian Competition: Technological Transfers in the German Plastics Industry from the 1930s to the 1970s," Working Papers 811, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:egc:wpaper:811
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp811.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James W. Friedman, 1971. "A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    2. Grossman, Sanford J & Hart, Oliver D, 1986. "The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 94(4), pages 691-719, August.
    3. N/A, 1963. "The Plastics Industry: a Comparative Study of Research and Innovation," National Institute Economic Review, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, vol. 26(1), pages 22-49, November.
    4. K. J. Arrow, 1971. "The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: F. H. Hahn (ed.), Readings in the Theory of Growth, chapter 11, pages 131-149, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Radner, Roy, 1970. "Problems in the Theory of Markets under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 60(2), pages 454-460, May.
    6. Robert J. Aumann, 1985. "Repeated Games," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: George R. Feiwel (ed.), Issues in Contemporary Microeconomics and Welfare, chapter 5, pages 209-242, Palgrave Macmillan.
    7. Rosenberg,Nathan, 1994. "Exploring the Black Box," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521459556.
    8. Richard R. Nelson, 1995. "Recent Evolutionary Theorizing about Economic Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 48-90, March.
    9. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1975. "Vertical Integration and Communication," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 6(1), pages 173-183, Spring.
    10. Fudenberg, Drew & Gilbert, Richard & Stiglitz, Joseph & Tirole, Jean, 1983. "Preemption, leapfrogging and competition in patent races," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 3-31, June.
    11. Chris Freeman & Luc Soete, 1997. "The Economics of Industrial Innovation, 3rd Edition," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 3, volume 1, number 0262061953, April.
    12. David Dollar & Edward N. Wolff, 1993. "Competitiveness, Convergence, and International Specialization," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262041359, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Konstantinos Konstantakis & Panayotis G. Michaelides & Theofanis Papageorgiou, 2014. "Sector size, technical change and stability in the USA (1957-2006): a Schumpeterian approach," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 41(10), pages 956-974, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Streb, Jochen, 2003. "Shaping the national system of inter-industry knowledge exchange: Vertical integration, licensing and repeated knowledge transfer in the German plastics industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(6), pages 1125-1140, June.
    2. Attila Havas, 2016. "Social and Business Innovations: Are Common Measurement Approaches Possible?," Foresight-Russia Форсайт, CyberLeninka;Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «Национальный исследовательский университет «Высшая школа экономики», vol. 10(2 (eng)), pages 58-80.
    3. Timothy Bresnahan & Jonathan Levin, 2012. "Vertical Integration and Market Structure [The Handbook of Organizational Economics]," Introductory Chapters,, Princeton University Press.
    4. Raymond J.G.M. Florax & Henri L.F. de Groot & Peter Mulder, 2011. "Energy Efficiency and Technological Change," Chapters, in: Raymond J.G.M. Florax & Henri L.F. de Groot & Peter Mulder (ed.), Improving Energy Efficiency through Technology, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    5. Havas, Attila, 2016. "Recent economic theorising on innovation: Lessons for analysing social innovation," MPRA Paper 77385, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    6. Dosi, Giovanni & Nelson, Richard R., 2010. "Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 51-127, Elsevier.
    7. Geels, Frank W., 2004. "From sectoral systems of innovation to socio-technical systems: Insights about dynamics and change from sociology and institutional theory," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(6-7), pages 897-920, September.
    8. Huo, Jingjing, 2015. "How Nations Innovate: The Political Economy of Technological Innovation in Affluent Capitalist Economies," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198735847.
    9. Stolpe, Michael, 1995. "Technology and the dynamics of specialization in open economies," Open Access Publications from Kiel Institute for the World Economy 738, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    10. Sandra Tavares Silva & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2006. "An evolutionary model of firms' institutional behavior focusing on labor decisions," FEP Working Papers 227, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    11. Müller, Matthias & Kudic, Muhamed & Vermeulen, Ben, 2021. "The influence of the structure of technological knowledge on inter-firm R&D collaboration and knowledge discovery: An agent-based simulation approach," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 570-579.
    12. Streb, Jochen, 1999. "How to Win Schumpeterian Competition. Technological Transfers in the German Plastics Industry from the 1930s to the 1970s," Center Discussion Papers 28374, Yale University, Economic Growth Center.
    13. Attila Havas, 2015. "Various approaches to measuring business innovation: their relevance for capturing social innovation," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1554, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    14. Nemet, Gregory F., 2009. "Demand-pull, technology-push, and government-led incentives for non-incremental technical change," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(5), pages 700-709, June.
    15. Unruh, Gregory C., 2000. "Understanding carbon lock-in," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 817-830, October.
    16. Foxon, T. J. & Gross, R. & Chase, A. & Howes, J. & Arnall, A. & Anderson, D., 2005. "UK innovation systems for new and renewable energy technologies: drivers, barriers and systems failures," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(16), pages 2123-2137, November.
    17. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    18. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2021. "On the optimality of outsourcing when vertical integration can mitigate information asymmetries," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    19. Christopher Hansman & Jonas Hjort & Gianmarco León-Ciliotta & Matthieu Teachout, 2020. "Vertical Integration, Supplier Behavior, and Quality Upgrading among Exporters," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 128(9), pages 3570-3625.
    20. Elizabeth J. Altman & Frank Nagle & Michael L. Tushman, 2013. "Innovating Without Information Constraints: Organizations, Communities, and Innovation When Information Costs Approach Zero," Harvard Business School Working Papers 14-043, Harvard Business School, revised Sep 2014.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technological transfer; Schumpeterian competition; Repeated game; Plastics industry; Germany;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L65 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Chemicals; Rubber; Drugs; Biotechnology; Plastics
    • N64 - Economic History - - Manufacturing and Construction - - - Europe: 1913-
    • O31 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Innovation and Invention: Processes and Incentives

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:egc:wpaper:811. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benjamin King (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/egyalus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.