IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/egc/wpaper/905.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Demystifying the German "Armament Miracle" During World War II. New Insights from the Annual Audits of German Aircraft Producers

Author

Listed:
  • Lutz Budrab

    (University of Bochum)

  • Jonas Scherner

    (University of Mannheim)

  • Jochen Streb

    (University of Hohenheim)

Abstract

Armament minister Albert Speer is usually credited with causing the boom in German armament production after 1941. This paper uses the annual audit reports of the Deutsche Revisions- und Treuhand AG for seven firms which together represented about 50 % of the German aircraft producers. We question the received view by showing that in the German aircraft industry the crucial changes that triggered the upswing in aircraft production already occurred before World War II. The government decided in 1938 that aircraft producers had to concentrate on a few different types, and in 1937 that cost-plus contracts were replaced with fixed price contracts. What followed was not a sudden production miracle but a continuous development which was fuelled first by learning-by-doing and then by the ongoing growth of the capital and labor endowment.

Suggested Citation

  • Lutz Budrab & Jonas Scherner & Jochen Streb, 2005. "Demystifying the German "Armament Miracle" During World War II. New Insights from the Annual Audits of German Aircraft Producers," Working Papers 905, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    • Handle: RePEc:egc:wpaper:905
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.yale.edu/growth_pdf/cdp905.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Naomi R. Lamoreaux & Daniel M. G. Raff & Peter Temin, 1999. "Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number lamo99-1, May.
    2. Kazuhiro Mishina, 1999. "Learning by New Experiences: Revisiting the Flying Fortress Learning Curve," NBER Chapters, in: Learning by Doing in Markets, Firms, and Countries, pages 145-184, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Blazek, David & Sickles, Robin C., 2010. "The impact of knowledge accumulation and geographical spillovers on productivity and efficiency: The case of U. S. shipbuilding during WWII," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1484-1497, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anelí Bongers, 2017. "Learning and forgetting in the jet fighter aircraft industry," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(9), pages 1-19, September.
    2. Diwas Singh KC & Bradley R. Staats, 2012. "Accumulating a Portfolio of Experience: The Effect of Focal and Related Experience on Surgeon Performance," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(4), pages 618-633, October.
    3. Mihaela Iulia Pintea & Peter Thompson, 2007. "Technological Complexity and Economic Growth," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 10(2), pages 276-293, April.
    4. Jonathan R. Clark & Robert S. Huckman & Bradley R. Staats, 2013. "Learning from Customers: Individual and Organizational Effects in Outsourced Radiological Services," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(5), pages 1539-1557, October.
    5. Jørgen Hansen & Camilla Jensen & Erik Madsen, 2003. "The establishment of the danish windmill industry—Was it worthwhile?," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 139(2), pages 324-347, June.
    6. Laura J. Kornish & Steven A. Lippman & John W. Mamer, 2011. "Search and the introduction of improved technologies," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(6), pages 578-594, September.
    7. Blazek, David & Sickles, Robin C., 2010. "The impact of knowledge accumulation and geographical spillovers on productivity and efficiency: The case of U. S. shipbuilding during WWII," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1484-1497, November.
    8. Peter Thompson & Mihaela Pintea, 2005. "Technological Complexity, R&D and Education: Some Pleasant Arithmetic," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 185, Society for Computational Economics.
    9. Madsen, Erik Strøjer & Jensen, Camilla & Hansen, Jørgen Drud, 2002. "Scale in Technology and Learning-by-Doing in the Windmill Industry," Working Papers 02-2, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Department of Economics.
    10. Thompson, Peter, 2010. "Learning by Doing," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 429-476, Elsevier.
    11. Agathe Gilain & Pascal Le Masson & Benoit Weil, 2018. "Managing Learning Curves In The Unknown: From ‘Learning By Doing’ To ‘Learning By Designing’," Post-Print hal-01900961, HAL.
    12. Kim, Sukkoo, 1999. "The Rise of Multiunit Firms in U.S. Manufacturing," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 360-386, October.
    13. Fabio Panetta & Fabiano Schivardi & Matthew Shum, 2009. "Do Mergers Improve Information? Evidence from the Loan Market," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 41(4), pages 673-709, June.
    14. Martin, Stephen, 2006. "Competition policy, collusion, and tacit collusion," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 24(6), pages 1299-1332, November.
    15. Ethan Ilzetzki, 2023. "Learning by necessity: Government demand, capacity constraints, and productivity growth," Discussion Papers 2305, Centre for Macroeconomics (CFM).
    16. Ryan, Michael P., 2010. "Patent Incentives, Technology Markets, and Public-Private Bio-Medical Innovation Networks in Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1082-1093, August.
    17. Ming Liu & Sumner la Croix, 2013. "A Cross-Country Index of Intellectual Property Rights in Pharmaceutical Innovations," Working Papers 201313, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics.
    18. Arjan van Rooij, 2012. "Claim and control: The functions of patents in the example of Berkel , 1898--1948," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 54(7), pages 1118-1141, October.
    19. Andrew Alexander, 2015. "Decision-making authority in British supermarket chains," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 57(4), pages 614-637, June.
    20. David Genesove & Wallace P. Mullin, 2001. "Rules, Communication, and Collusion: Narrative Evidence from the Sugar Institute Case," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 379-398, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    German armament miracle; World War II; Albert Speer; Aircraft industry; Learning-by-doing; Fixed-price Contract; Labor productivity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H57 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Procurement
    • L64 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - Other Machinery; Business Equipment; Armaments
    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:egc:wpaper:905. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Benjamin King (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/egyalus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.