Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth

by Richard R. Nelson

Overview

This volume mounts a full-blown attack on the standard neo-classical theory of economic growth, which Richard Nelson sees as hopelessly inadequate to explain the phenomenon of economic growth. He presents an alternative theory which highlights that economic growth driven by technological advance involves disequilibrium in a fundamental and continuing way. Nelson also argues that a theory of economic growth driven by technological advance must recognize a range of institutions, such as universities, public laboratories, and government agencies, in addition to business firms and markets. He further argues that growth theories that focus on an aggregate measure of growth, such as GNP per capita, are blind to what is going on beneath the aggregate, where differing rates of advance in different sectors, and the birth and death of industries are an essential part of the growth process. The broad theory of economic growth Nelson presents sees the process as involving the co-evolution of technologies, institutions, and industry structure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674019164
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	12/30/2005
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Richard R. Nelson is George Blumenthal Professor of International and Public Affairs, Business, and Law, Emeritus, at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part I

1. The Agenda for Growth Theory: A Different Point of View

2. The Asian Miracle and Modern Growth Theory

Part II

3. Recent Evolutionary Theorizing about Economic Change

4. On the Nature and Evolution of Human Know-how

5. Making Sense of Institutions as a Factor Shaping Economic Performance

Part III

6. On the Uneven Evolution of Human Know-how

7. Physical and Social Technologies and Their Evolution

Part IV

8. The Problem of Market Bias in Modern Capitalist Economies

9. The Market Economy and the Scientific Commons

References

Index

What People are Saying About This

Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth is a valuable and important collection of papers by one of the leading scholars in the field­-arguably the only scholar capable of spanning such a diverse array of perspectives with such assurance and mastery of the material.

Nathan Rosenberg

Richard Nelson's writings have a thoroughly admirable clarity and directness, and a concern with issues of recognizable importance that ought to make Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth attractive to a wide audience. He is, without question, one of the most creative thinkers in modern economics.
— Nathan Rosenberg,
Stanford University

David Mowery

Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth is a valuable and important collection of papers by one of the leading scholars in the field­-arguably the only scholar capable of spanning such a diverse array of perspectives with such assurance and mastery of the material.

— David Mowery,
Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

Editorial Reviews

Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth is a valuable and important collection of papers by one of the leading scholars in the field—arguably the only scholar capable of spanning such a diverse array of perspectives with such assurance and mastery of the material.

David Mowery

Richard Nelson’s writings have a thoroughly admirable clarity and directness, and a concern with issues of recognizable importance that ought to make Technology, Institutions, and Economic Growth attractive to a wide audience. He is, without question, one of the most creative thinkers in modern economics.

Nathan Rosenberg

Columbia economist Nelson provides a gentlemanly critique of modern neoclassical growth theory as it is typically taught and presented by economists. That theory emphasizes the accumulation of capital (these days, human as well as physical) and of technical change (usually abstract and disembodied) as determinants of growth in a theoretical framework that assumes a moving equilibrium at a high level of abstraction. Nelson, in contrast, would shift the emphasis to innovation, entrepreneurship, and risk-taking in a series of disjointed movements away from equilibrium. He draws mainly on evidence from the United States but also uses data from Japan and the four Asian "tigers." Institutional change must usually occur to extract full advantage from new technologies, but their evolution is typically delayed and sometimes involves costly false moves. A concluding chapter warns of the looming dangers of "privatizing" basic research in the United States and calls for open licensing of research carried out by government and by universities. The book, written in nontechnical language but aimed mainly at economists and other social scientists, harkens back to a time when economists were less committed to mathematical models and were more attentive to what we actually observe in dynamic economies and societies.

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