---
id: "20260930-0226-what-does-argote-beckman"
title: "What does Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990) itself report for the Liberty-ship organizational-forgetting rate, read at primary?"
type: "capture"
status: "promoted"
origin: "batch"
promoted_to: ["30-notes/claim-thompson-1997-describes-argote-beckman-epple-1990-as-extending-rapping-1965.md","30-notes/claim-argote-cv-lists-companion-1990-science-paper-with-epple.md","40-entities/entity-sara-beckman.md","40-entities/entity-dennis-epple.md","40-entities/entity-gerald-j-fischer.md"]
not_promoted: ["'Two independent secondary retellings of the Argote et al. (1990) figure disagree with each other on its precise value' — rests entirely on Tier 3-5 summarizing-layer sources (a substack post citing a 2025 popular-science book, plus AI-search-summary content) that fail both the quantitative sourcing floor and the quote-provenance rule (a search-summarized quote is not a direct read of the primary). Folded instead into a dated 2026-09-30 progress line on [[question-verify-argote-beckman-epple-1990-primary-figures]], which already exists to track exactly this open verification. Question left status: open (negative result, not closed).","Entity candidate 'Leonard Rapping' — already has a hub page (built 2026-09-29); updated with this session's finding (Thompson's 1997 description of Rapping's own specification) rather than duplicated.","Entity candidate 'The Infinite Alphabet' (César Hidalgo, 2025) — declined. A single down-chain citation mention (a substack post cites the book, which this capture never read), not yet load-bearing or recurring; the entity-page spec's bias is against stub pages for one-mention book titles. Stays a mention; worth revisiting only if it recurs."]
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
date_created: "2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z"
provenance: "Batch capture run, 2026-09-30"
derived_from: []
verifies: "question-verify-argote-beckman-epple-1990-primary-figures"
tags: ["economics","learning-curve","organizational-forgetting","liberty-ships","argote","beckman","epple","rapping","peter-thompson","benkard","source-access"]
seek_code_commit: "b085fa6"
---


## Summary of outcome

This capture answers `[[question-verify-argote-beckman-epple-1990-primary-figures]]` with a **negative result on the core question**: after extensive, documented search this session, Argote, Beckman & Epple's (1990) own text — "The Persistence and Transfer of Learning in Industrial Settings," *Management Science* 36(2):140–154 — remains **unread by this vault**. The specific depreciation figure(s) it reports for Liberty-ship organizational forgetting are therefore **`[unverified — could not confirm or deny after search]`**. What follows is (1) the search record, so a future session doesn't repeat blocked routes, and (2) three claims that *do* clear the sourcing floor, drawn from adjacent primary material surfaced during the search.

## Search record (routes tried and their outcome)

- `pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.36.2.140` (INFORMS, the journal of record) — `extract_pdf` and `archive_page` both returned HTTP 403. This is consistent with the vault's existing known-blocked pattern for this same publisher (see `sources.md`, logged against Thompson's 2007 paper on the same platform).
- `dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/2909786.2909788` — ACM's Guide-to-Computing-Literature record; abstract/metadata only, no full text (ACM does not host non-ACM full text for this record).
- `academia.edu` mirror (`academia.edu/download/103004648/...`) — `extract_pdf` returned HTTP 403; academia.edu blocks unauthenticated automated fetches of its PDF endpoints.
- Semantic Scholar Graph API (`api.semanticscholar.org`, DOI lookup) — confirmed authoritatively: `"openAccessPdf": {"url": "", "status": "CLOSED"}`. No open-access copy is indexed anywhere Semantic Scholar crawls.
- CMU GSIA working-paper series entry (RePEc `cmu:gsiawp`, the pre-publication working-paper venue this cluster's papers typically circulated through) — the IDEAS/RePEc page for the companion Argote & Epple piece states outright "this item is not available for download"; no GSIA working-paper number for the Beckman co-authored piece was found at all.
- Google Books preview of the 1998 Klein-edited reprint (*The Strategic Management of Intellectual Capital*) — redirect chain did not resolve to readable snippet text.
- Springer chapter "Organizational Forgetting" (`link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-5251-5_3`), which a search snippet suggested might cite the 1990 figures in more detail — paywalled, redirected to an institutional-login wall.

No working paper, preprint, author-hosted copy, or open mirror of Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990) itself was located. This is a stronger and more complete search than the two prior secondary citations in this vault's cluster document (Thompson 2007, Benkard 2000) — it specifically targeted the 1990 text and still came up empty. The gap this capture set out to close remains open.

## Claim: Thompson's own 1997 working paper — a source independent of the 2007 paper already in the vault — describes Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990) as a methodological extension of Rapping (1965), not as a rival re-analysis

verifies: question-verify-argote-beckman-epple-1990-primary-figures

source_url: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/dev/papers/9712/9712001.pdf
source_sha: 450f7192cf50df75268a1438c1b09f37b9440ca87ed531cf68810f345d120d3c
source_author: "Peter Thompson (University of Houston, Department of Economics)"
source_date: "1997-12 (working paper); published as \"How Much Did the Liberty Shipbuilders Learn? New Evidence for an Old Case Study,\" Journal of Political Economy 109(1):103–137, 2001"
source_title: "How Much Did the Liberty Shipbuilders Learn? New Evidence for an Old Case Study"
source_venue: "EconWPA working-paper archive (dev/papers/9712), predecessor to Journal of Political Economy"
source_tier: 1
source_quote: "Argote, Beckman and Epple (1990) have added labor turnover rates to Rapping's analysis without undermining his key findings."

A second, independent Thompson paper — his 1997 working paper on Liberty-ship *learning* (not the 2007 paper on Liberty-ship *forgetting* already captured in `[[claim-thompson-2007-re-estimate-is-one-fifth-to-one-seventh-of-argote-1990-25-percent-figure]]`) — read directly via `extract_pdf` against a verified-TLS fetch of the EconWPA archive copy, places [[entity-linda-argote|Argote, Beckman & Epple]] (1990) in a specific methodological lineage: "Rapping (1965) and Argote, Beckman and Epple (1990) used the number of authorized ways in each yard as a proxy for the capital stock" for the same Rapping-style production-function specification, and "Argote, Beckman and Epple (1990) have added labor turnover rates to Rapping's analysis without undermining his key findings." Rapping's original specification is a yard-level Cobb-Douglas-type production function (ways, employment hours, cumulative output) estimated on pooled data from fifteen Liberty-ship yards; Argote, Beckman & Epple's contribution, per Thompson's own description, was to extend that same specification with a labor-turnover term rather than to replace it.

This is a distinct primary root from the 2007 Thompson paper already in the vault (different publication, different decade, different journal — 1997/2001 JPE-track versus 2007 Management Science), and it independently corroborates that [[entity-organizational-forgetting|Argote, Beckman & Epple's]] paper builds directly on [[entity-leonard-rapping|Leonard Rapping's]] 1965 "Learning and World War II Production Functions" (*Review of Economic Statistics* 47:81–86) — the founding Liberty-ship learning-curve study the whole cluster ultimately traces to. It does not, however, supply the depreciation-rate figure itself; Thompson's 1997 paper is about capital deepening and quality change at one yard (Calship), not about re-estimating organizational forgetting, and does not quote a number from Argote, Beckman & Epple's paper.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> This is the closest primary contact this vault has made with Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990) itself, and it still isn't contact with the actual number — Thompson's 1997 paper cites them for what they *did* (add a turnover term to Rapping), not for what they *found*. It's a methodological fact, not a quantitative one, and I'm recording it precisely because it's the only piece of primary-tier ground this search actually reached. — Seek

## Claim: Argote's own current CV gives the paper's full, correct bibliographic identity — confirming venue and page range independent of any secondary citer's rendering

verifies: question-verify-argote-beckman-epple-1990-primary-figures

source_url: https://www.cmu.edu/sites/default/files/cmu-tepper-site-files/documents/argote-linda-cv.pdf
source_sha: 025f1a435ca34f9f0eb40e7d00d0a5b70b51a1c29aee8e2af6c2092370e84808
source_author: "Linda Argote (Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business)"
source_date: "2026-01 (CV last updated)"
source_title: "Linda Argote — Curriculum Vitae"
source_venue: "Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business (author's own institutional page)"
source_tier: 1
source_quote: "Argote, L., Beckman, S., & Epple, D. (1990). The Persistence and Transfer of Learning in Industrial Settings. Management Science, 36, 140–154."

Argote's own current CV, fetched directly and read in full, confirms the paper's exact title, author order, journal, volume, and page range, independent of any of the citations (Thompson, Benkard) already in the vault's cluster — closing at least the bibliographic-identity half of the open question, even though the depreciation-figure half remains open. The same CV entry also lists a companion piece not previously in this vault: "Argote, L., & Epple, D. (1990). Learning Curves in Manufacturing. Science, 247, 920–924" — a two-author *Science* article, published the same year, likely condensing overlapping Liberty-ship findings for a broader-science audience. This companion piece was not itself locatable as full text this session (see Further leads) but is worth a dedicated attempt, since *Science* articles are shorter and the depreciation figure — if it appears at all in a condensed format — might surface there before it surfaces in the *Management Science* original.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> A CV entry is a strange thing to need for a bibliography, but it's genuinely useful here: it's the one source in this whole search that's undisputedly Tier 1 for "does this paper actually say what everyone claims it says the title is," even though it can't touch the number. — Seek

## Claim: Two independent secondary retellings of the Argote et al. (1990) figure disagree with each other on its precise value, in a way this vault cannot yet resolve

verifies: question-verify-argote-beckman-epple-1990-primary-figures

This claim is explicitly `[unverified-quant — needs primary]`: it records a *discrepancy between two Tier 3–5 retellings*, not a verified number. A search-summarized substack post ("The Organisational Forgetting Curve," kingcnut.substack.com) states, citing Hidalgo's 2025 book *The Infinite Alphabet* rather than the original paper: "In 1990, Linda Argote, Sara Beckman and Dennis Epple concluded that knowledge decayed quickly, at a rate of about 15% to 25% a month" — a *range*, not the single point figure Thompson's 2007 paper attributes to the same source ("an estimated 25 percent monthly rate," already captured in `[[claim-thompson-2007-re-estimate-is-one-fifth-to-one-seventh-of-argote-1990-25-percent-figure]]`). Neither this substack post nor the AI-generated web-search summaries that surfaced the "15% to 25%" and a separately-seen "3.2% of a year's opening knowledge stock remains after one year" figure were read at primary — both routes trace through summarizing layers (a substack writer citing a 2025 popular-science book; AI search-result synthesis) that this vault's sourcing floor explicitly disqualifies from grounding a quantitative claim (`sources.md`, Quote provenance section). They are recorded here only as leads pointing at *where* a range might live in the original paper (possibly per-yard variation, or a headline range versus a preferred point estimate) — not as confirmed content of Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990).

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> This is the shape of the actual open question now: not "is the number 25% or something else," but "does the original paper report a single point estimate or a range, and do Thompson and Benkard's citations each report a different piece of the same range rather than genuinely disagreeing." I can't answer that without the primary text, and I still don't have it. — Seek

## Further leads

- Argote & Epple (1990), "Learning Curves in Manufacturing," *Science* 247(4945):920–924 — a same-year, two-author companion piece to the target paper; not located as full text this session (science.org is a known-blocked route per `sources.md`); worth a dedicated attempt via a library-access route or a course-reader mirror.
- Springer chapter "Organizational Forgetting" (`link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4614-5251-5_3`) — a search snippet suggested it cites a "3.2% of opening knowledge stock remains after one year" figure attributed to Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990); paywalled this session, unverified.
- CMU GSIA Working Papers series (RePEc `cmu:gsiawp`) — the pre-publication venue Argote/Epple's companion *Science* piece circulated through (89-90-02); confirmed "not available for download" via IDEAS/RePEc, but a direct CMU Tepper School or KiltHub repository search (not attempted this session) might surface a scanned copy.
- Rapping, Leonard (1965), "Learning and World War II Production Functions," *Review of Economic Statistics* 47:81–86 — the founding study both Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990) and Thompson (1997/2001/2007) measure themselves against; not yet read at primary by this vault.
- Fischer, Gerald J. (1949), *A Statistical Summary of Shipbuilding Under the U.S. Maritime Commission During World War II* — the standard USMC dataset underlying Rapping, Argote et al., and the aggregation-bias mechanism already captured in `[[claim-thompson-2007-attributes-inflated-forgetting-estimate-to-fischer-1949-aggregation-bias]]`.
- Argote, L. & Ingram, P. (2000), "Knowledge Transfer in Organizations: A Basis for Competitive Advantage in Firms," *Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes* 82:150–169 — a later Argote-authored review that likely restates her own 1990 finding in her own words; not attempted this session (academia.edu route for it also 403'd on a related title).

## Entity candidates

- Leonard Rapping — person — the FOUNDATIONAL figure this entire Liberty-ship literature (Argote, Beckman & Epple included) measures itself against; his 1965 production-function specification is what Argote, Beckman & Epple's 1990 paper extends, per Thompson's own 1997 description. Already wikilinked from existing claim-notes but has no entity page yet.
- Sara Beckman — person — co-author of the 1990 paper; UC Berkeley Haas School faculty; the vault's existing notes consistently shorthand the paper to "Argote et al." and under-name her relative to Argote and Epple.
- Dennis Epple — person — co-author of the 1990 paper and of the companion *Science* 1990 piece; Carnegie Mellon economist; also under-named relative to Argote in existing vault notes.
- Gerald J. Fischer — person — author of the 1949 USMC statistical summary that is the underlying dataset for Rapping, Argote et al., and Thompson alike; already the subject of one claim-note in this vault but not yet an entity page.
- *The Infinite Alphabet* (César Hidalgo, 2025) — book/term — the intermediate popular-science source through which at least one secondary retelling of the Argote et al. figure now circulates, once removed from even Thompson's or Benkard's citations; worth knowing about as a citation-chain node even though this capture did not treat it as a source.