Information Technology, Capital Structure and the Nature of Technical Change

This paper presents statistical evidence on (1) the importance of "soft" capital spending items like marketing and R&D investments, and (2) the dominant service content of production in the modern manufacturing firm. It pictures the firm as a dominantly information processing entity that has been gradually shifting its competitive base from process cost efficiency toward a product technology. The paper, hence, argues (3) that during the post-war period technical change has been gradually pivoting in a relatively more (hardware) capital saving direction.