Publisher's Synopsis
The last two centuries have witnessed intense and sustained technological progress, but it has not affected all areas equally. This book surveys the numerous theories of technological change that have emerged in an attempt to provide a unified theoretical framework for interpreting the large variations in innovative behaviour that exist between enterprises and whole economies.;Innovation is first considered at the micro level, and its impact at the scale of an individual enterprize is analyzed. Technological change is shown to be sensitive to both cultural and institutional forces. Countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan and the Soviet Union have had very different experiences of technological change and this has been reflected in variations of their rates of economic growth at different times. The ability of various economic theories to explain this becomes the key theme for the second half of the book. All the major theories relating technological change and economic growth, including those of Kuznets, Phelps, Kaldor and Hicks, are canvassed, but throughout the emphasis is on providing a unified theoretical framework to help explain the impact of technological progress on both a macro and micro scale.
