Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Adoption of Advanced Manufacturing Technology by U.S. Firms: A Microeconomic Study of Manufacturing Technology

与外国竞争对手相比，许多美国制造商在采用先进制造技术方面一直比较慢。这一事实被认为是美国制造商全球竞争力下降的主要原因。用这笔拨款进行研究的目的是解释美国公司这种令人困惑的行为。这个项目至少在两个方面具有创新性。首先，它不会只专注于一个行业和一种技术，而是会研究许多先进技术和许多行业。其次，该项目将用Avinash Dixit和Robert Pindyck开发的新古典投资理论取代标准的新古典投资理论，该理论明确假设：(1)投资是不可逆的，(2)企业对先进技术投资的成本和收益都是不确定的，并且使用新信息不断更新他们对这些成本和收益的估计，(3)投资可以推迟。迪克西-平迪克模型将使用人口普查局1988年、1991年和1993年的制造业技术调查数据进行检验。该数据集提供了有关植物采用新技术的信息，并包括衡量投资的不确定性水平和不可逆性程度的变量。

Many US manufacturers have been slower to adopt advanced manufacturing technology than has their foreign competitors. This fact has been cited as a leading cause of the decline in the global competitiveness of US manufacturers. The objectie of the research to be undertaken with this grant is to explain this puzzling behavior by US firms. This project is innovative in at least two ways. First, it will not concentrate on just one industry and one technology, but will examine many advanced technologies and many industries. Second, the project will replace the standard neo-classical theory of investment with one developed by Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck that explicitly assumes: (1) investment is irreversible, (2 firms are uncertain about both costs and benefits of investments in advanced technology and are constantly updating their estimates of these costs and benefits using new information, and (3) the investment can be deferred. The Dixit-Pindyck model will be tested using data from the Census Bureau s Survey of Manufacturing Technology for 1 988, 1991, and 1993. This data set provides information on the adoption of new technologies by plants, and includes variables that measure the level of uncertainty and the degree of irreversibility of the intestment.