Versatilit?, produzione e tempo: le radici dei cambiamenti economici

Versatility, Production and Time: The Roots of Economic Changes - The consideration of time to build makes sharp differences when qualitative or quantitative changes in production occur. There are two different perspectives, the "sectoral?and the Neoaustrian one. A sectoral model immune of "malleability" is proposed in the article; not only labour, but at least one type of machine, must be versatile. Versatility is the source of technological evolution, a chain of efforts begun when human beings discovered that utensils could be used to produce better utensils. A new way of regarding the problem of innova- tion, based on the concept of "transition technology", is set up. When changes occur, the set of inherited machines put an internal constraint to the transition requiring the construction in time of additional or different capacity, independently of labour or financial constraints. The model allows to perform the same out-of-equilibrium analyses which are allowed by the Neoaustrian one but to widen the study of coordination.