Technical Change, Effective Demand and Employment

Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 1989

Erkenntnis, 1989

Economic analysis has given rise to several conflicting accounts of technology and of the rate and directions of technological change. In this paper we examine some of the contrasting images of technology that have arisen in economics and we discuss some of the conceptual and methodological questions connected with the study of technological change (TC for short). We argue for a microeconomic approach in which TC is considered against the background of industrial, institutional and market structures. But we suggest that attempts to introduce into this framework cognitive models of scientific progress are doomed to failure, because of the fundamental differences between scientific and technological knowledge and the basic disanalogies between TC and scientific progress. In particular, we argue that the efforts of and others to treat technology and TC in a Kuhnian framework, by applying notions like technological paradigm, normal technology, and technological revolution, are misleading. By contrast, we hold that, given the influence of economic markets, industrial and institutional structures on the development of technology, it is more plausible to regard TC as a continuous and incremental process, rather than as suffering Kuhnian crises and revolutions. The paper is organised as follows. Section 1 introduces some basic concepts needed for the analysis of technological change. Section 2 contains some general remarks on technology in economics and reviews some of the main macroeconomic growth theories. In Section 3, we turn towards the more 'applied' perspective of microeconomic analysis, within the theory of the firm and industrial organisation, with emphasis on the recent work of Nelson and Winter (e.g., 1982). In Section 4 we deal with the conceptual relations between science and technology and the general question of the applicability of Kuhn's model of scientific change to TC. This serves as a basis for examining in Section 5 Dosi's approach to TC which embeds elements of Erkenntnis 30 (1989) 101-127. O 1989 by Kluwer Academic Publishers. M. R. DI NUCC1 PEARCE AND D. PEARCE microeconomic analysis within a Kuhnian conceptual framework. Lastly, in Section 6, we discuss what seems to be a basic principle governing TC which we call the principle of industrial-technological continuity. 1. TECHNOLOGY: The study of technology and technological change is a hybrid discipline that provides a natural meeting ground for philosophers, economists, sociologists and historians of the engineering and applied sciences. This is all to the good. Interdisciplinary research and the pooling of methods and expertise from different fields should lead to a better understanding of technological progress and its impact on society. Yet because of its hybrid nature, the study of technology is characterised by distinct and often contrasting research traditions. They diverge not only in their methodologies, but in their basic terminologies too. Even within a single discipline like economics, conceptual differences are striking, beginning with the notion of technology itself for which there is no universally accepted definition. Sometimes even compatible accounts of TC look very different from one another because they employ the concept of technology in a wider or narrower sense. Starting from the original meaning of technology as a body of knowledge about techniques, we can regard technological change as consisting of new knowledge about such techniques, and think of technological progress as comprising a special case of technological change. Following Freeman (1979), we distinguish technological from merely technical change, since the latter need not involve essentially new knowledge, but may refer simply to the adoption or diffusion of existing or improved techniques. 1 Borrowing a now standard classification first used by Schumpeter, TC can be analysed through the sequence invention -innovationdiffusion. The invention phase can be seen as related to the sphere of R&D. Research is directed at the enlargement of present knowledge and can be subdivided into basic and applied research. The stage of development deals with the application of research results (e.g., for the construction of prototypes and models), and should lead to an extension of the technical horizon, or of the technology, considered as the state of technical knowledge of an economy. The phase of innovation

C-FEPS Working Paper No, 2001

Economic Alternatives, 2019

A thorough analysis of current capitalism requires a proper understanding of the dynamics of technological changes and its effects on the economy. Innovation is fundamental for less developed capitalist economies to reducing the gap between them and the core capitalist countries. In this paper, a brief review of the different analytical perspectives used by economic schools throughout history to analyse the topic of technology is made. The relevance of technological changes had different levels of importance at different historical moments. The ideas of the classical economists (Smith, Ricardo, etc.), the socialists and Marx, Schumpeter’s ideas, the neo-classical school, the Keynesian view and some ideas from Latin America, are considered in this paper.

Middle East Development Journal, 2013

Development Economics: Microeconomic Issues in Developing Economies eJournal, 2017

The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, the economic insights about the employment impact of technological change are disentangled starting from the classical economists to nowadays theoretical and empirical analyses. On the other hand, an empirical test is provided; in particular, longitudinal data – covering manufacturing and service sectors over the 1998-2011 period for 11 European countries – are used to run GMM-SYS and LSDVC estimates. Two are the main results: 1) a significant labour-friendly impact of RD yet, this positive employment effect appears to be entirely due to the medium-and high-tech sectors, while no effect can be detected in the low-tech industries; 2) capital formation is found to be negatively related to employment; this outcome points to a possible labour-saving effect due to the embodied technological change incorporated in gross investment (mainly related to process innovation).

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 1980

2023

The text is devoted to new trends and changes emerging in the economic sciences, focused on growth, socio-economic development and income inequalities in the context of the idea of global rationality, understood as the ability to sustain the long-term existence of civilization on the entire planet. The thematic scope of this problem is broad; thus it is impossible to cover all its complexity in one study. Hence, attention is focused on selected aspects of the issues raised: on issues related to growth and development as well as economic inequalities, the economic foundations of growth, and the issue of substituting natural capital by human capital. A critical diagnosis and postulates for the future, with regard to measures of well-being in the context of the idea of sustainable development, are also considered as well as including the issue of sustainable development in development economics. The article ends with concluding remarks highlighting the thesis that economic growth should now be acceptable only when it does not excessively exploit natural capital and does contribute to deteriorating the quality of life. As for the methodological side of the text, it was created mainly through analysing the literature on the subject, but attention should be paid to the original nature of some predictions and recommendations, which were made as a result of the assumptions of the so-called diagnostic and prognostic analysis.

ISRN Economics, 2014

Rensselaer Working Papers in Economics, 2003

Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA. Tel: +1-518-276-6387; Fax: +1-518-276-2235; URL: http://www.rpi.edu/dept /economics/; E-Mail: [email protected] ... New Evidence on the Link between ...