Merton J. Peck

The weapons acquisition process: An economic analysis

This volume is the first publication resulting from a three-year research project at the Harvard Business School on the development of advanced weapons. It is based upon comprehensive historical case studies of twelve weapon system programs and seven commercial product developments, and upon more limited investigations of several specific research questions.

What Is To Be Done? Proposals for the Soviet Transition to the Market

This important book presents a bold plan for converting the failing economy of the Soviet Union or its constituent republics to a functioning market economy. Its authors describe the essential logic of the institutions of a market economy and show how these institutions are dependent on one another. They argue persuasively for their drastic and simultaneous reform within the Soviet system either at the central or republican level. Written at the request of Soviet economists and with their participation, the book is fascinating reading for anyone who wishes to understand the worsening economic crisis in the Soviet Union and the reasons why a rapid move to the market would be beneficial and how it can be obtained. Written before the amazing events of August 1991, the proposals in this book were devised for the Union. Even though new problems now emerge, these recommendations still apply as economic reform is implemented primarily by the Republics.

Technology and economic growth: He case of Japan

Abstract This paper provides a general background of the characteristics of the Japanese economy that relate to its use of technology to promote economic growth. We do not consider the common view that Japan just catching up with the technological level of other industrialized countries explains its remarkable rate of post-war economic growth. Rather we argue that the effective importation of technology requires complementary resources of management, skilled labor, capital, and domestic R&D as well as public to facilitate the transfer of technology. Japan has such complementary resources and public policies. The first part of the paper describes the process of technology importation and current concerns in Japan about dependence on imported technology. The second part of the paper describes Japans domestic R&D effort and its major reliance on private sector R&D, supplemented, however, with government intervention in selected industries. The third part of the paper examines the institutional settings that had the significant impacts on Japans introduction of new technology. These institutional factors include 1) post-war economic growth and changes in industry structure, 2) the character of competition, 3) the business group and 4) characteristics and organization in the supply of labor.

Do Borders Matter? Soviet economic Reform after the Coup

MOST ANALYSTS were surprised to see the Soviet empire collapsing under the weight of its own inefficiency. As usual, this inefficiency was foreseen by the remarkable John Maynard Keynes, who in 1934 wrote, I have not touched on the real strength of Communism. On the surface Communism enormously overestimates the significance of the economic problem. The economic problem is not too difficult to solve. If you will leave that to me, I will look after it.. .. Offered to us as a means of improving the economic situation, [communism] is an insult to our intelligence. But offered as a means of making the economic situation worse, that is its subtle, its almost irresistible, attraction. I

Is Japan really a share economy

Abstract Weitzman claims that Japan is a “living laboratory” for the share economy. This paper examines that proposition and concludes that Japanese bonuses are better interpreted as disguised wage payments than as profit shares. Other institutional features of the Japanese labor market provide more likely explanations of that economys performance.

The decline of the Russian R&D sector and the prospects for its revival

In the decades since World War II the USSR became one of two great powers for research and development (R&D), the United States being the other one. By 1990 the USSR had over one million researchers, more than any other nation except the United States. The peaks of its achievements (especially in military aircraft, nuclear science and space research) contributed to the perception that the USSR was one of the two superpowers of R&D. Many observers considered that the R&D sector would be one of the most valuable assets bequeathed to the new Russia. Science and technology, freed of the rigidities of central planning, was held to provide the basis for high technology exports and economic growth. Like many of the rosy hopes for Central and Eastern Europe, the prediction was incorrect. The R&D sector went into a precipitous decline that continued to at least 1995. Neither the promised exports nor the economic growth materialized. This essay attempts an answer as to why Russian R&D failed to live up to its promise. We think an important factor is that the Soviet legacy included an institutional structure that was inefficient and ill-suited to a market economy. The first section describes the major features of the Soviet system and why it deserved the labels we have given it. The second section describes the crisis in the R&D sector during the initial years of the transition (1991-1994). The characteristics of the Soviet R&D sector continued into the transition years and added to the problems in the R&D sector. The Soviet R&D system was very large, centrally directed and government financed, all features ill-suited to a market economy. It is not surprising then that transition generated a crisis in the R&D sector. Still the policies of 1991 to 1994 appear to have made the transition even more painful. The final section examines the events of 1995 and 1996 to see whether the recent events provide a basis for a limited optimism that the R&D sector has begun to be transformed into one that is more efficient and more consistent with a market economy.