Thompson (2007) measures his Liberty-ship re-estimate (3.6–5.7%) directly against Argote, Beckman & Epple's (1990) 25%-per-month figure for the same case

economicslearning-curveorganizational-forgettingliberty-shipspeter-thompsonargotebenkardshipbuilding

Thompson's paper draws, in his own words, the comparison this whole Liberty-ship organizational-forgetting dispute rests on: "In a seminal study on organizational forgetting, Argote, Beckman and Epple (1990) had reported an estimated 25 percent monthly rate of knowledge depreciation in the industry. The estimates reported in columns 4 through 6 of Table 1 of the present paper range from 3.6 percent to 5.7 percent." Earlier in the same paper he restates the older figure identically: "In wartime construction of Liberty cargo vessels, Argote, Beckman and Epple report that knowledge depreciated at the rate of 25 percent per month."

Thompson's product-mix-corrected re-estimate is thus roughly one-fifth to one-seventh of the case study's founding number — established by re-analyzing the same underlying event (WWII Liberty-ship production) with newly assembled unit-level data, not by disputing Argote et al.'s methodology from a distance. He extends the comparison to a second industry, noting that his corrected estimates land at "rates very close to those reported in Benkard (2000)" for aircraft manufacturing — meaning his re-estimated shipbuilding rate and Benkard's independently-derived aircraft rate (~4% monthly, 61% annual retention) converge across two different industries once the ship-production number is corrected, where the original 25% figure did not.

This claim records what Thompson's own paper (Tier 1) reports about Argote, Beckman & Epple's number; it is not an independent reading of Argote, Beckman & Epple's own primary text, which this vault has not yet obtained. claim-benkard-2000-estimate-implies-far-less-forgetting-than-prior-studies cites the same 1990 figure from a second independent direction (via Benkard's citation) — the two secondary readings agree, which corroborates that this is indeed the number circulating in the literature, though both routes trace back to the same unread 1990 original.