Studies of LDCs, which gain substantially from imitation or modification of DC
technology, contradict findings based on DC data. These studies indicate that the
contribution of capital per worker to growth, even among fast-growing East Asian
NICs, is 50–90 percent, whereas that of the residual is only 10–50 percent (Maddison
1970; Robinson 1971:391–408; Young 1995:641–680; see also Jorgenson 1995;
Chenery, Robinson, and Syrquin 1986).1
For command economies Russia–Soviet Union, pre-1989 Eastern Europe, and pre-
1976 China, the residual is even smaller than for the third-world countries of Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. Virtually all growth in these command economies was
attributed to increases in capital and other inputs, and only a tiny fraction to technical
innovation, a combination that contributed to the Soviet collapse in 1991 (see
Chapter 19).