When countries import production machinery, they must choose between new and used equipment. This article looks at that choice in the presence of labor-saving technical progress and complementarity between technologies and skills within the firm. It develops a theoretical model of the market for used machines. It then analyzes data on U.S. exports of metalworking machine tools by country of destination, classifying machines according to their vintage and their technological characteristics. The data show that the share of used equipment imported is higher if the importing country has a lower level of development, as measured by income per capita. Econometric estimation of the determinants of this share shows that it also is higher the greater is the technological change embodied in the machine or the greater is the change in the skills required to run the machine efficiently.These results indicate that technological factors and skill constraints may be as important as factor prices in determining the choice of technique in developing countries. The policy recommendation emerging from this work—avoid constraints on imports of used equipment—is similar to that in the existing literature. But the reasoning is different. Instead of emphasizing inappropriate capital-labor ratios for low-wage countries, the results indicate that investment in advanced technologies is effective only if importing countries have the skills to use them.
当国家进口生产设备时,必须在全新设备和二手设备之间做出选择。本文着眼于在劳动节约型技术进步以及企业内部技术和技能互补的情况下如何做出选择。本文构建了一个二手设备市场的理论模型。然后,本文分析了美国按目的地国分类的
金属加工机床出口数据,并根据机床的年份和技术特征对它们进行了分类。数据显示,如果按人均收入衡量,进口国的经济发展
水平较低,则进口的二手设备份额就越高。对这一份额的决定因素进行计量经济学估算表明,如果机床所体现的技术变革越大,或者高效操作机床所需的技能变化越大,则二手设备份额也越高。这些结果表明,在发展中国家,技术因素和技能限制可能与技术要素价格一样重要,它们决定了技术选择。这项工作得出的政策建议——避免对二手设备进口的限制——与现有文献中的政策建议相似。但推理方式不同。研究结果没有强调低工资国家不适当的资本-劳动力比率,而是表明,只有在进口国有使用先进技术的技能时,对先进技术的投资才是有效的。