January 2000

28 January 2000

Dear Ms Zicci

Herewith I am glad to write in accordance with my forthcoming visit to Greece as a participant to ASIA FORUM 2000 which is to be held in Thesalloniki on 7-8 February.

I was a great pleasure to meet you during my visit to Athens in July.

Taking the chance of going to Greece I would greatly appreciate if you could find a few minutes in your business schedule and meet me and discuss the issues of mutual interest.

Thank you in advance for your kind cooperation and assistance. Looking forward to meeting you, I remain

Sincerely yours

Gennady Bogachev

Deputy Director

аспирантура (канд. экз.)

Экзаменационный билет (на 2 листах) по дисциплине

английский язык

(специальность: социальная философия)

Task I. Translate from English into Russian in writing using a dictionary. Your time is 45 minutes

The book opens with a broad survey, in Part I. of the historical literature on technical change. It attempts to provide a guide to a wide range of writings, including those by some social historians and social theorists as well as economic historians and economists, that illuminate technological change as-a; historical phenomenon. It should not be necessary to belabor two points: (i) that past history is an indispensable source of information to anyone interested in characterizing technologies, and (2) that both the determinants and the consequences of technological innovation raise issues that go far beyond the generally recognized domain of the economist and the economic historian. The first chapter discusses aspects of the conceptualization of technological change and then goes on to consider what the literature has had to say on (i) the rate of technological change. (2) the forces influencing its direction, (3) the speed with which new technologies have diffused, and (4) the impact of technological change on the growth in productivity.

A separate chapter is devoted to Marx. Marx's intellectual impact has been so pervasive as to rank him as a major social force in history as well as an armchair interpreter of history. And yet, curiously enough, I argue that Marx's analysis of technological change opened doors to the study of the technological realm through which hardly anyone has sub­sequently passed.

Part II is, in important respects, the core of the book. Each of its chapters advances an argument about some significant characteristics of industrial technologies, characteristics that are typically suppressed in discussions of technological change conducted at high levels of aggregation or lacking in historical specificity. Chapter 3 explores a variety of less visible forms in which technological improvements enter the economy. Each of these forms, it is argued, is important in determining the connections between technological innovations and the growth of productivity lowing from innovation. Chapter 4 explicitly considers some significant characteristics of different energy forms. It became a common practice in the 1970s, following the Arab oil embargo, to treat energy as some undifferentiated mass expressible in Btus which it was in society's interests to minimize. This chapter examines some of the complexities of the long-term interactions between technological change and energy resources. It emphasizes, in particular, the frequently imperfect substitutability among energy sources in industrial contexts and the consequent suboptimality of criteria for energy utilization that fail to take specific characteristics of different energy forms into account.

Task II. Translate the letter from English into Russian without a dictionary. Your time is 5-7 minutes

Sadovaya'Kudrinskaya str.

Russian Federation

Dear Minister

Thank you for your interest to meet representatives of the Brandenburg State Government, especially Prime Minister Dr. Manfred Stoipe, during your stay in the Federal Republic of Germany from April 25"' to April 26"' 2000.

It is my pleasure to invite you to the state of Brandenburg. A copy of your request has been.mailed to the office of the Prime Minister for coordinating purposes.

Sincerely yours

Dr. Wolfgang FьrniЯ

аспирантура (канд. экз.)

Экзаменационный билет (на 2 листах) по дисциплине

английский язык

(специальность: социальная философия)

Task I. Translate from English into Russian in writing using a dictionary. Your time is 45 minutes

Chapter 5 "On Technological Expectations," addresses an issue that is simultaneously relevant to a wide range of industries - indeed, to all industries that are experiencing, or are expected to experience, substantial rates of technical improvement. I argue that rational decision making with respect to the adoption of an innovation requires careful consideration of prospective rates of technological innovation. Such a consideration will often lead to counterintuitive decisions, including slow adoption rates that, from other perspectives, may appear to be irrational. Expectations about the future behavior of technological systems and their com­ponents are shown to be a. major and neglected factor in the diffusion of new technologies.

The last two chapters of Part II are primarily concerned with issues of greatest relevance to high-technology industries -industries in which new product development involves large development costs, long lead times, and considerable techno­logical uncertainty (especially concerning product performance characteristics) and that rely in significant ways upon knowledge that is close to the frontiers of present-day scientific research.

Chapter 6. "Learning by Using," identifies an important source of learning that grows out of actual experience in using products characterized by a high degree of system complexity. In contrast to learning by doing, which deals with skill improvements that grow out of the productive process, learning by using involves an experience that begins where learning by doing ends. The importance of learning by using is explored in some detail with respect to aircraft, but reasons are advanced suggesting that it may be a much more pervasive phenomenon in high-technology industries.

The final chapter in Part II, "How Exogenous Is Science?" looks explicitly at the nature of science-technology interactions in high-technology industries. It examines some of the specific ways in which these industries have been drawing upon the expanding pool of scientific knowledge and techniques. The chapter also "considers, however, a range of much broader questions concerning the institutionalization of science and the manner in which the agenda of science is formulated in advanced industrial societies. Thus, a major theme of the chapter is that, far from being exogenous forces to the economic arena, the content and direction of the scientific enterprise are heavily shaped by technological considerations that are, in turn, deeply embedded in the structure of industrial societies.

Task II. Translate the letter from English into Russian without a dictionary. Your time is 5-7 minutes

To: Mr Kim-nee LEE

Minister of Trade

Ministry of Trade and Industry