Transition from Cost Minimizing Management to Cost Pass-along Management in U.S. Manufacturing Industries

미국 공업에 있어서 비용 극소화 관리로 부터 비용 전가식 관리로의 변천

By the mid 1960's the rate of productivity growth in the manufacturing industries of the United States reached the lowest level ever recorded in the American economy. As a result the cost-offsetting operations that had been a century-long part of cost minimizing became less feasible. U.S. manufacturing firins apparently embarked on a pattern of a cost pass-along management. Accounting for price variation as a function of a shift from cost minimizing to cost pass-along is the main subject of this investigation. An econometric model of the inflation process is presented which indicates a clear shift in the modal behavior of manufacturing industries from cost minimizing (1948-1964) to cost pass-along (1965-1975). The latter behavior, initially triggered by the drag of resource diversion on the productivity growth process, undermines the pressure toward productive efficiency that is at the core of industrial engineering, and at the center of U.S. industry's ability to remain competitive.