Zvi Griliches, “Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change,” Econometrica 25, no. 4 (Oct. 1957), 501-522.

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Notes

• 501 – “This is a study of factors responsible for the wide cross-sectional differences in the past and current rates of use of hybrid seed corn in the United States.”
• “The lag in the development of adaptable hybrids for particular areas and the lag in the entry of seed producers into these areas (differences in origins) are explained on the basis of varying profitability of entry, ‘profitability’ being a function of market density, and innovation and marketing cost.”

 

• “The results are summarized and the conclusion is drawn that the process of innovation ,the process of adapting and distributing a particular invention to different markets and the rate at which it is accepted by entrepreneurs are amenable to economic analysis.”

 

• “By concentrating on a single, major, well defined, and reasonably well recorded development — hybrid corn — we may hope to learn something about the ways in which technological change is generated and propagated in U. S. agriculture.”

 

• “Hybrid corn was the invention of a method of inventing, a method of breeding superior corn for specific localities. It was not a single invention immediately adaptable everywhere. The actual breeding of adaptable hybrids had to be done separately for each area. Hence, besides the differences in the rate of adoption of hybrids by farmers — the ‘acceptance’ problem — we have also to explain the lag in the development of adaptable hybrids for specific areas — the ‘availability’ problem.”

 

• 501n3 – “‘Hybrid corn is the product of a controlled, systematic crossing of specially selected parental strains called ‘inbred lines.’ These inbred lines are developed by inbreeding, or self-pollinating, for a period of four or more years. Accompanying inbreeding is a rigid selection for the elimination of those inbreds carrying poor heredity, and which, for one reason or another, fail to meet the established standards.’ ‘[The inbred lines] are of little value in themselves for they are inferior to open-pollinated varieties in vigor and yield. When two unrelated inbred lines are crossed, however, the vigor is restored. Some of these hybrids prove to be markedly superior to the original varieties. The development of hybrid corn, therefore, is a complicated process of continued self-pollination acompanied by selection of the most vigorous and otherwise desirable plants. These superior lines are then used in making hybrids.’”
  • From N. P. Neal and A. M. Strommen, and R. W. Jugenheimer
  • Hybridization as a technology, not a single strain as a technological artifact. With this reconceptualization, the great innovation of the Green Revolution wasn’t the delivery of new technological artifacts — certain strains of hybrid corn — but the delivery of hybridization — A TECHNIQUE DEVELOPED IN MEXICO OVER THE COURSE OF MILLENIA TO CREATE WHAT WE KNOW TO BE CORN IN THE FIRST PLACE.
• 511 – “That is, the actual cst of innovating for an area will depend on whether or not hybrids which have already been developed for other areas prove adaptable in this area, an on whether or not the experiment stations have produced and related inbred lines or hybrids adaptable to this area. Since most of the early research was done for the area known as the ‘Corn Belt,’ other areas benefited from the availability of these research results to a varying degree, depending on the adaptability of Corn Belt inbred lines to those areas.”
• 521 – “The above analysis does not purport to present a complete model of the process of technological change. Rather the approach has been to break down the problem into manageable units and to analyze them more or less separately.”
• 522n45 – “In this context one may say a few words about the impact of ‘sociological’ variables. It is my belief that in the long run, and cross-sectionally, these variables tend to cancel themselves out, leaving the economic variables as the major determinants of the pattern of technological change. This does not imply that the ‘sociological’ variables are not important if one wants to know which individual will be first or last to adopt a particular technique, only that these factors do not vary widely cross-sectionally. . . . With a little ingenuity, I am sure that I can redefine 90 per cent of the ‘sociological’ variables as economic variables.”