A wide ranging contribution to the debate about the impact of technological change on economic and social welfare.

Commissioned and brought tohgether for the research project by the world-renowned Council on Foreign Relations, the authors have produced an important compendia in applied economics.

This useful new book reviews the literature on technology and economic growth covering historical and theoretical developments such as: *new models for measuring productivity*sources of technical knowledge and technological spillovers*stock market reactions to investment in technologySuch a comprehensive survey is likely to be welcomed by students

Maintaining the innovation capabilities of firms, employees and institutions is a key component for the generation of sustainable growth, employment, and high income in industrial societies. Gaining insights into the German innovation system and the institutional framework is as important to policy making as is data on the endowment of the German economy with factors fostering innovation and their recent development. Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research has repeatedly commissioned reports on the competitive strength of the German innovation system since the mid-eighties. The considerable attention that the public and the political, administrative and economic actors have paid to these reports in the past few years proves the strong interest in the assessment of and indicators for the dynamics behind innovation activities. The present study closely follows the pattern of those carried out before. It has been extended, however, to include an extensive discussion on indicators for technological performance and an outline of the key features of the German innovation system.

This book studies the link between technological change and country-specific performance.

In 1987 the Swedish National Board for Technical Development (STU, later becoming the Swedish National Board for Industrial and Technical Development, NUTEK) initiated a study of Sweden's Technological Systems and Future Development Potential. A comprehensive, interdisciplinary study was envisioned, yielding not only useful insight but also a permanent competence base for future analyses of technological systems and technology policy in Sweden. Three leading Swedish research institutes were invited to participate: the Industrial Institute for Economic and Social Research in Stockholm, the Department ofIndustrial Management and Economics at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, and the Research Policy Institute at the University of Lund. I was invited to direct the project. The project group decided to focus initially on a particular technological system, namely factory automation, to be followed by similar studies of other systems. Numerous publications have resulted from the project thus far. The current volume represents a summary of our work on factory automation. It consists of several original essays and of some previously published papers which have been edited, in some cases substantially, in order to form a comprehensive and coherent picture of a technological system. To our knowledge, this is the first in-depth analysis of a technological system designed as a component of a systematic study of technological systems more generally. At the time of this writing, three further studies on electronics and computers, pharmaceuticals, and powder technology are under way, to be published in a later volume.

Technology's contribution to economic growth and competitiveness has been the subject of vigorous debate in recent years. This book demonstrates the importance of a historical perspective in understanding the role of technological innovation in the economy. The authors examine key episodes and institutions in the development of the U.S. research system and in the development of the research systems of other industrial economies. They argue that the large potential contributions of economics to the understanding of technology and economic growth have been constrained by the narrow theoretical framework employed within neoclassical economies. A richer framework, they believe, will support a more fruitful dialogue among economists, policymakers, and managers on the organization of public and private institutions for innovation. David Mowery is Associate Professor of Business and Public Policy at the School of Business Administration, University of California, Berkeley. Nathan S. Rosenberg is Fairleigh Dickinson Professor of Economics at Stanford University. He is the author of Inside the Black Box: Technology and Economics (CUP, 1983).

Most discussions of U.S. economic competitiveness focus on the creation of new technologies, but the abundant evidence presented in this timely book indicates that the key factor underpinning U.S. competitiveness is not the development of technology itself, but the factors that influence the commercialization of technology. The importance of effective management and performance in the commercialization of new technologies reflects today's changing environment. The post-war decades of undisputed U.S. scientific and technological hegemony have been replaced by a period in which U.S. firms are challenged by foreign competitors in some fields, and struggling to regain their former positions in others. Although the U.S. scientific research establishment arguably has lost little if any of its post-war preeminence, the same cannot be said with respect to the performance of U.S. firms as developers, adapters, and managers of new technologies, largely because government policies have not been conducive to successful commercialization of technology. As we enter the last decade of the twentieth century, economic policy and performance are being linked more and more closely to technology-related issues. Technology commercialization is now recognized as critical to this linkage, and this book constitutes a state-of-the-art analysis of this vital but often overlooked aspect of technological innovation. The sixteen papers in this volume contribute to three important tasks. First, they draw on new developments in theoretical and empirical analysis to integrate the macro-and microeconomic dimensions of technological innovation and commercialization. Second, they extend and enrich the macroeconomic analysis of growth, capital formation, and international economic interactions to highlight the influences of macroeconomic variables on technology commercialization. Technology and capital investment are shown to be complementary inputs to the growth process, which means that favorable investment conditions are prerequisites for higher growth rates. Third, they also extend and enrich the microeconomic analysis of technological innovation and commercialization, in the process providing guidance for managers seeking to improve performance in both of the areas.

This study examines governmental intervention in the technical process and its effect on economic performance. Stoneman discusses the welfare framework and the relationship between technological change and economic performance, and investigates the effects of technology policies in a theoretical construct that unifies invention, innovation, and diffusion.