Radical technological changes (so-called "technology shocks") frequently disrupt the competitive market structure. New entrants appear, industries need to be redefined, incumbents lose their positions or vanish completely. Fast moving industries - like the often quoted example of the semiconductor industry - have preferably been analyzed for these phenomena. But do the findings hold for industries with longer development cycles like the global machine tool industry? Here, multivariate analysis is used to find out what management needs to focus on in order to lead companies through the technology shocks. The research for this book builds on in-depth interviews with 100 experts and decision makers from the machine tool industry involved in technology shocks and statistical analysis of detailed quantitative surveys collected from 58 companies. In several instances the results challenge classical teaching of technology management. Adrian J. Slywotzky - US top selling business author and one of the most distinguished intellectual leaders in business - comments: "In Technology Shocks, Heinrich Arnold develops a very useful model for analyzing technology shocks, and for focusing on those factors that will enable a company to navigate through these shocks successfully, and repeatedly. Although this work is focused on technology, its thinking has useful implications beyond technology shocks. It provides ideas that managers can use to protect their firms when they are faced with any type of discontinuity, technology-based or not".

Understanding the joint dynamics of internat. prices and quantities remains a central issue in internat. bus. cycles. Internat. relative prices appreciate when domestic consumption and output increase more than their foreign counterparts. In addition, both trade flows and trade prices display sizable volatility. This paper incorporates Hicks-neutral and investment-specific TS into a standard two-country general equilibrium model with variable capacity utilization and weak wealth effects on labor supply. Investment-specific TS introduce a source of fluctuations in absorption similar to taste shocks, thus reconciling theory and data. Also presents implications for the transmission mechanism of TS across countries. Illus. This is a print on demand pub.

Our answer: Not so well. We reached that conclusion after reviewing recent research on the role of technology as a source of economic fluctuations. The bulk of the evidence suggests a limited role for aggregate technology shocks, pointing instead to demand factors as the main force behind the strong positive comovement between output and labor input measures.

IST shocks are often interpreted as multi-factor productivity (MFP) shocks in a separate investment-producing sector. However, this interpretation is strictly valid only when some stringent conditions are satisfied. Some of these conditions are at odds with the data. Using a two-sector model whose calibration is based on the U.S. Input-Output Tables, the authors consider the implications of relaxing several of these conditions. They show how the effects of IST shocks in a one-sector model differ from those of MFP shocks to an investment-producing sector of a two-sector model. MFP shocks induce a positive short-run correlation between consumption and investment consistent with U.S. data, while IST shocks do not. Illus. This is a print on demand report.

The real business cycle literature has largely ignored the empirical question of what role technology shocks actually play in business cycles. The observed procyclicality of total factor productivity (TFP) does not prove that technology shocks are important to business cycles, since demand shocks could generate procyclical TFP due to increasing returns or other reasons. I address the role of technology by investigating the dynamic interactions of inputs, TFP and two observable indicators of technology shocks: R+D spending and patent applications. Using annual panel data on 19 US manufacturing industries from 1959 -1991, I find that favorable R+D or patent shocks tend to increase inputs, especially labor, in the short run, but to decrease inputs in the long run, while tilting the mix of inputs towards capital and nonproduction labor. Favorable technology shocks do not significantly increase measured TFP at any horizon, except for a subset of industries dominated by process innovations, suggesting that available price data do not capture productivity improvements due to product innovations. Technology shocks explain only a small fraction of input and TFP volatility at business cycle horizons.