Demand For Industrial Products Research Articles

The Role of Agricultural Growth in South Asian Countries and the Affordability of Food: An Inter-country Analysis

Agriculture is the mainstay of the most developing countries, which supplies food and employment to the majority of the population. Because of the dominance of the agricultural sector, a sufficient supply of domestic food is indispensable to support stable socio-economic and political systems in these countries. To attain a sustained growth of agricultural productivity, sufficient investment in the agricultural sector is crucial, particularly in the initial stages of economic development. This increases agricultural production and as a result, there is a shift in (human) resources from the agricultural sector to the industrial and services sectors. According to Duranton (1998), in order to transform from agricultural sector to industrial sector a significant increase in the agricultural sector productivity is necessary. On the demand-side, the growth in agricultural production increases agricultural income which leads to increase in the demand for industrial products; whereas on the supplyside, the increase in the agricultural productivity shifts human resources from the agricultural to the industrial sector [Jorgenson (1967)].

The use of an expert system in the M3 competition

The Expert System that one of the authors had developed during his dissertation was tried on the data set of the M3 Competition. The expert system was originally designed to forecast monthly demand for industrial products in a distribution environment and was modified to run the data. The results of the application of the system were mixed as in some of the time series the results were statistically undistinguishable with the exception of the monthly series. In general, the intervention did not improve the accuracy and the effort required to do it was substantial.

James Bowron: The Autobiography of a New South Industrialist by Robert J. Norrell

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 157 an essential contributor to New Hampshire’s industrial development and the region’s economic prosperity. By and large, the courts as well as various state agencies agreed. “Generally,” Steinberg concludes, “New Hampshire’s water law favored large, industrial users over other competing claimants. . . . Farmers, petty producers, and others . . . were the losers” (pp. 163—64). Steinberg does an excellent job of detailing the legal contours of water usage in 19th-century New England. With an instructive chapter on the decline and rebirth of fishing on the Merrimack and another on water pollution and public health, he provides consider­ able insight into the ecological problems that arose with the industri­ alization of New England’s rivers. However, the book concludes somewhat abruptly. After suggesting in the next-to-last section that the Lake Company seemed to enter a stage of decline after losing a series of court cases in the late 1870s, the author fails to relate the actual circumstances of that decline—and the reader is thus left wondering how the story ends. Perhaps owing to this problem, the author never gets around to spelling out the broader implications of his study or relating them to the historiography of industry, technol­ ogy, and the environment in 19th-century America. These shortcom­ ings notwithstanding, Nature Incorporated is a suggestive work that deserves a wide readership. The book enunciates an important thesis that will doubtless stimulate further inquiry. The material is rich, and Steinberg is to be congratulated for opening new terrain in American industrial history. Merritt Roe Smith Dr. Smith directs the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. James Bowron: The Autobiography of a New South Industrialist. By Rob­ ert J. Norrell. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Pp. xxxii + 285; illustrations, notes, index. $39.95. Coming to America in 1877 as representative of an English company that planned to develop the mineral resources of the Cumberland plateau in eastern Tennessee, James Bowron remained actively engaged in the southern iron business for the rest of his long life. As an executive of such industries as Tennessee Coal and Iron, the Dimmick Pipe Works, and Gulf States Steel, he was at the center of New South developments until the time of his death in 1928. He was therefore in a position to understand the enormous complexities of southern economic development, and his autobiography, based on a diary in which he made entries every day for a full fifty years, should 158 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE be “must” reading for every student of New South business, industry, or technology. In reading the book, one gathers that the fundamental causes of the South’s problems in industrial development were the same as those that inhibited development prior to the Civil War—namely, a dearth of capital and inadequate local demand for industrial products. Both of these conditions had been exacerbated by the wartime destruction of capital, which caused a continuation of the colonial economy while bringing the added feature of absentee ownership. In the case of the iron business, the long delay in beginning production of steel while concentrating on pig iron had resulted as early as 1892 in the familiar problem of overproduction of an item that depended absolutely on an export market. The result, predictably, was that the bottom dropped out of the price of pig iron and years of distress followed. Bowron, however, had brought with him from England an ideal skill for operating in the environment in which he found himself—a real mastery of the kind of creative credit found in business every­ where before the development of modern banking, but especially essential in the cash-poor and underdeveloped South. The art of “meeting one note by swapping and discounting another” (p. 17), and the technique of paying accounts by note, which “put off the evil day of payment” (p. 200), had been developed by Bowron in keeping his father’s glass business from bankruptcy, and he used these skills almost daily throughout his twenty years with Tennessee Coal and Iron and in his successful efforts to keep Gulf States Steel afloat during its reorganization. His...

The restructuring in the agricultural supply sector and its consequences on agricultural production

The article analyzes changes in agricultural demand for industrial products for the 1970–1984 period within the EEC. Furthermore, it discusses adjustments in the product supplying process with emphasis on concentration and industrial diversification. Finally, it proposes some hypotheses in terms of orientation of techniques and productive agricultural systems.

Demand versus Supply in the Industrial Revolution: A Reply

I welcome Ari Ben-Shachar's spirited comment on my 1977 paper Demand vs. Supply in the Industrial When I wrote it, over eight years ago, I hoped that the paper would stimulate others to pursue some of the issues which the paper raised. Although Ben-Shachar, regrettably, presents no original research or novel ideas, his comment provides an opportunity to reexamine the demand hypothesis. He flatters me by implicitly assuming that the readers of this JOURNAL are aware of the central argument made by the paper. It seems useful to reiterate briefly the main points before turning to the difficulties raised by Ben-Shachar. I termed the Gilboy thesis the view which claimed that an exogenous shift in demand was a causal factor in the Industrial Revolution. I did not provide an exact definition of the Industrial Revolution, an omission I now regret, because it may have contributed to Ben-Shachar's difficulties.' But under the assumption that most readers were in agreement as to what was meant by the Industrial Revolution, I asked three questions: (1) Was there an exogenous increase in demand for industrial products before and in the early stages of the Industrial Revolution and if so, what caused it and how large was it? (2) Assuming that the answer is yes, could an increase in demand have been a causal factor in the Industrial Revolution, through dynamic effects such as demand-induced technological change, economies of scale and agglomeration, and interfirm external economies? (3) Again assuming that the answer to the first question is yes, could an increase in demand have led to the Industrial Revolution, by bringing into use previously unemployed resources? Now, Ben-Shachar has nothing to say about queries (2) and (3) concentrating his criticism on Part I of the paper, which was an exercise in comparative statics.2 He claims that I dismiss Gilboy's argument simply by ignoring To the contrary, what I tried to do was to leave no stone unturned in giving the demand hypothesis every possible economic interpretation, howeVer fuzzily some of its proponents may have expressed it. I therefore may have gone too far in attributing to Gilboy's paper ideas that were not really there.3 Ben-Shachar's main complaint, however, seems

Materials Management and Buying Behaviour

Ever since the industrial revolution, companies have been trying to improve their overall performance. Most of the attention and efforts were directed towards reducing labour cost by improving productivity. This inward‐looking situation was possible as everything produced was usually easily sold (production capacity being smaller than demand for industrial products). Hardly any marketing effort was needed as customers were dependent on the producers in this sellers' market. On the “other side” of the company raw materials (and later energy) were abundantly available and cheap as many were imported from colonies without any political or economic power. Furthermore the raw material needs of the companies were not very complex. Internally, production processes were relatively simple with few intermediate stages so that the material flow through the company was easily managed and if something did go wrong, long delivery times or even failure to deliver did not have a long term impact on the companies' sales level.

Rural Exodus and Industrialization

Are country people destined to disappear in the near future as a result of the constant advance of technical and urban civilization? Having discovered that three-fourths of mankind are country people, American ethnologists and sociologists are studying their “urbanization” and their “industrialization” throughout the world in an effort to see to what extent there is compatibility—or incompatibility—between their traditional “cultures” and the demands of industrial production and of life in a mass society. European writers appear to be less perturbed by this dilution of peasant civilizations through contamination from the cities. They are concerned rather with the gradual disappearance of country people themselves, drawn into the cities by the rural exodus.

THE LONG‐RUN EFFECTS UPON THE UNITED STATES OF THE INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR EAST*

THE OBJECTIVE of this dissertation was to explore theoretically the economic effects of the industrialization of India and China upon the United States. This examination involved a combination of theoretical analysis, and the application of this theory to the statistical material available on India and China. The theoretical framework used was the theory of international trade. An attempt was made to determine those fields in which India and China might have a comparative advantage, which would enable them to compete effectively in the production of industrial goods. Then, assuming that the two countries did industrialize to a technical level approximately equivalent to that of Japan (possible new techniques were not considered), calculations were made of the output of various types of goods that the countries would produce, the percentage of workers in India and China that would be employed, and the raw material requirements for such a level of industrialization. Following this, the foreign trade and productive structure of the United States was examined to estimate the effect of this industrialization upon the comparative advantage of this country, under conditions of relatively free movement of goods in international trade. The population of 800,000,000 people in India and China is both a source of a major comparative advantage, as a supply of relatively inexpensive labor, and a major problem in the attempt to raise the living standards of the people. Industrialization is probably the one hope of the latter goal, but any industrial program would have to be very extensive if it wDre to employ a large proportion of the total population. It is doubtful if there is sufficient internal consumer's demand for industrial products, at present low per capita incomes, to support such a program, so that a large part of the output might have to be exported. This might so reduce the prices of manufac-

Use and Operational Control of Mechanical Equipment

THE increasing demand of industrial production and the effect of competition in the American way of life are stressing the need for water utility facilities to serve adequately beyond designed expectations. While looking ahead and planning for expansion of facilities, it is well to review those at hand to be certain that every available space or capacity to serve is utilized. Not only must there be capacity to serve, but the service is required to satisfy at least the Rules and Standards of Service for Water

Review of the Year 1934

NINETEEN thirty four, like nineteen thirty three, closed with business improving after a temporary recession. Both years showed alternate periods of advance and contraction, but in 1934 business volumes averaged higher and the fluctuations were less violent than in I933, when the dominant influences were the banking crisis and the initiation of a far-reaching program of economic legislation. The business curve of our Index of General Economic Conditions (page 25) reflects the improvement of the first half of I934, the subsequent recession as the effects of the drought and loss of confidence in the business outlook became evident, and the recovery late in the year. Business at the end of I934 was higher than at the beginning, and but little below the best of the year or the extraordinary peak of mid-I933 at the culmination of the movement arising from the nation's leaving the gold standard and the effort of business to act before government regulation became a fact. Speculation at the year end was at almost exactly the same level as a year earlier; it reached a peak last February, declined into the summer, and then advanced to somewhat above the summer's lowest level. Money remained extremely easy during the year, with a slight tendency to decline: a potentially stimulating influence for both speculation and business which failed to produce any great effects for reasons relating primarily to the unsettlement of business opinion during much of the time. Commodity prices rose as the result of increases in agricultural products and foods. The chief legislative measures of the year related to the currency (including silver as well as gold), though the law for control of the stock exchanges, the amendment of the Securities Act, and housing legislation were important. In respect to legislation dealing directly with industry and agriculture, the record of the year is of interest in what it shows regarding the working out of the Administration program rather than for new measures looking toward control or recovery. The Gold Reserve Act at the end of January and the accompanying presidential proclamation brought to a close -so far as I934 was concerned the episode of the depreciation of the dollar which began with the stoppage of gold exports in April I933 and had its most dramatic incident in the gold buying operations in the fall of I933. The Gold Reserve Act of I934 has been discussed from time to time in this REVIEW;1 and for our present purpose it is sufficient to point out that the undervaluation of the dollar in terms of foreign exchange has had the inevitable result of adding substantially to our gold holdings, thus tending to continue the maldistribution of gold among the various countries of the world. Devaluation could not have had such an effect if there had been widespread or persistent lack of confidence in the position of the devalued dollar, but, because it brought to an end the rapid depreciation of our currency, it was viewed in many quarters as a conservative measure. The most disturbing element in the currency situation was the action undertaken in regard to silver. The passage of the Silver Purchase Act before the adjournment of Congress and the nationalization of silver in August both unsettled confidence for a time, while the operations of the Treasury in the silver markets of the world produced serious financial disturbance in China. Concerning the effects of the recovery legislation in its non-monetary aspects, certain conclusions may be safely drawn from the record of the year. Undoubtedly the agricultural program has contributed to improvement in the condition of the farmers, though the severe and destructive drought of I934 meant that it operated under conditions far from normal. It was anticipated that economic improvement in the farming districts, by increasing demand for industrial products, would act favorably upon urban industry, while direct stimulus was to be furnished by the public works program and the measures taken under the National Industrial Recovery Act. These measures did not produce sustained industrial recovery in I934 2 The manufactures index in October was only two points higher than in the preceding November, when the I933 recession