C. Lanier Benkard

Stanford GSB economist whose 2000 American Economic Review paper, "Learning and Forgetting: The Dynamics of Aircraft Production," is the vault's sole primary source for a quantified organizational-forgetting depreciation rate — the estimate (δ≈0.96 monthly, ~61% of experience surviving a year on the Lockheed L-1011 program) that turns "learning can reverse" from a plausible mechanism into a specific, checkable number. His paper was read directly in 2026-07-24 verification, upgrading the vault's central claim from a Tier 3 secondary summary to his own words.

References

• claim-organizational-forgetting-can-reverse-the-learning-curve · claim-benkard-2000-estimate-implies-far-less-forgetting-than-prior-studies · claim-benkard-2000-headline-depreciation-figure-is-the-spillover-adjusted-specification

• Related hubs: entity-linda-argote · entity-lockheed-l-1011-tristar · entity-organizational-forgetting

• Captures: 2026-07-11-hop-learning-curve-unidentified, 2026-07-24-does-benkard-2000-report-the-organizational-forgetting-depreciation

• 2026-09-27: A direct read of his NBER working-paper reference list finds his citation of Argote, Beckman & Epple (1990) quotes that paper's title exactly ("The Persistence and Transfer of Learning in Industrial Settings"), unlike David & Brachet (2011)'s citation of the same source, which alters the title — the one comparable pair found in a (still-open, inconclusive) copy-fingerprint check. See question-do-organizational-forgetting-reference-lists-show-copy-fingerprints.

• 2026-09-29: Thompson (2007), read directly at primary, independently notes his own product-mix-corrected Liberty-ship estimates land at "rates very close to those reported in Benkard (2000)" — a cross-industry convergence (shipbuilding vs. aircraft manufacturing) once Thompson's ship-production number is corrected for aggregation bias, where the two industries' uncorrected numbers did not agree. (claim-thompson-2007-re-estimate-is-one-fifth-to-one-seventh-of-argote-1990-25-percent-figure)