sectoral economic costs and benefits of ghg mitigation - IPCC

Patrick Criqui, Nikos Kouvaritakis and Leo Schrattenholzer
Figure 7. The observed learning rates range from –8% to 44%. The extreme values of this range
are detached from the rest of the histogram, however, and can therefore be regarded as two single
«outliers». The bulk of the observations falls into the interval between 10% and 30%.
The learning rates summarised in Figure 7 are solely phenomenological. As a first step towards
explaining them, Dutton and Thomas (1984) present four causal categories of possible
explanatory factors. These are (1) technological change, (2) labour learning, (3) local
management styles and operating system characteristics, and (4) scale effects. On this basis, Neij
(1997) has classified learning rates for three categories of technologies, i. e., plants, module
technologies, and continuous processes. Classifying industrial and manufacturing products into
these categories led to Table 2.
Figure 12
Learning rates observed in 22 field studies
Frequency
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-8 -4 0 4 8 12 16 20 24 28 32 36 40 44
Learning rates per doubling, percent
Source: Dutton and Thomas, 1984
Table 2
Learning rates in three categories
Average
Range
Plants 10%