Policies to encourage more open trading and accumulation of human capital may be as important to growth and technological change as additional foreign lending.

There is substantial research about cross section and time series correlations between economic growth and various economic, social, demographic and political variables. After analyzing these correlations, the paper makes the following conclusions. Exogenous increases do not seem to cause increases in the rate of technological change, but instead seem to be associated with lower rates of return to capital. Increased openness to international trade speeds up growth and technological change as do an increase in scientists and engineers. Countries more open to trade have a higher level of investment and capital growth - which is not associated with a fall in the marginal product of capital. Countries that become more integrated with world markets seem to have a higher marginal product of capital. Increases in capital investment associated with a higher per capita GDP are associated with a fall in the marginal product of capital. Increases in capital investment associated with increases in trade are not. This suggests that policies to encourage more open trading may be as important to growth as additional foreign lending - especially in their cumulative effects - and at the same time enhance the efficient use of foreign loans.

In this wide ranging exposition of the various economic theories of technological change, Stanislaw Gomulka relates them to rates of growth experienced by different economies in both the short and the long term. Analysis of countries as diverse as Japan, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom demonstrates that there is an interdependence between technological change and the institutional and cultural characteristics of different countries, which can have a profound effect on their rates of growth. All of the major, relevant models are discussed, including those of Kuznets and Phelps, but throughout the emphasis is on the creation of a unified theoretical framework to help explain the impact of technological progress on both a micro and a macro scale.

Much is written in the popular literature about the current pace of technological change. But do we have enough scientific knowledge about the sources and management of innovation to properly inform policymaking in technology dependent domains such as energy and the environment? While it is agreed that technological change does not 'fall from heaven like autumn leaves,' the theory, data, and models are deficient. The specific mechanisms that govern the rate and direction of inventive activity, the drivers and scope for incremental improvements that occur during technology diffusion, and the spillover effects that cross-fertilize technological innovations remain poorly understood. In a work that will interest serious readers of history, policy, and economics, the editors and their distinguished contributors offer a unique, single volume overview of the theoretical and empirical work on technological change. Beginning with a survey of existing research, they provide analysis and case studies in contexts such as medicine, agriculture, and power generation, paying particular attention to what technological change means for efficiency, productivity, and reduced environmental impacts. The book includes a historical analysis of technological change, an examination of the overall direction of technological change, and general theories about the sources of change. The contributors empirically test hypotheses of induced innovation and theories of institutional innovation. They propose ways to model induced technological change and evaluate its impact, and they consider issues such as uncertainty in technology returns, technology crossover effects, and clustering. A copublication o Resources for the Future (RFF) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

This volume reviews the literature on productivity growth and relates it to the production function approach to technological change.

Technology, Growth, and the Labor Market brings together research by economists from academia and the Federal Reserve System. The first section of the volume includes discussions by monetary policymakers with firsthand experience in determining how technology affects productivity, inequality, and macroeconomic growth. Papers in the second section discuss the sources of the surge in labor productivity growth during the latter half of the 1990s and present forecasts of labor productivity growth rates during the next few years. In the third section, the papers focus on the role of technological advances in changes in earnings inequality in the labor market. The authors examine whether inequality should be viewed as a causal result of skill-biased technological change or whether there is a missing link - or perhaps no link - between changes in technology and changes in wage inequality. The final section explores the relationships between computer investment, worker skills, human resource practices, and productivity at the industry and firm levels.

Technological change is not only a determinant of growth but is also a pivotal factor in international competition and the modernization of an economy. In one of the most in-depth and detailed studies of its kind, George Korres analyzes the macroeconomic and the microeconomic factors influencing the economics of innovation and the economic relations between technology, innovation, knowledge and productivity. In particular, this book examines both the theoretical framework and the applications for empirical results. This second edition contributes updated figures and estimations for technical change from EU member states and features new subjects, including growth models, productivity models, production function models and non-parametric models. In one of the most in-depth and detailed studies of its kind, this book captures all the existing contemporary techniques in the theoretical fields as well as the empirical applications of the models.

This book examines the long term economic growth that has raised the West's material living standards to levels undreamed of by counterparts in any previous time or place. The authors argue that this growth has been driven by technological revolutions that have periodically transformed the West's economic, social and political landscape over the last 10,000 years and allowed the West to become, until recently, the world's only dominant technological force. Unique in the diversity of the analytical techniques used, the book begins with a discussion of the causes and consequences of economic growth and technological change. The authors argue that long term economic growth is largely driven by pervasive technologies now known as General Purpose (GPTs). They establish an alternative to the standard growth models that use an aggregate production function and then introduce the concept of GPTs, complete with a study of how these technologies have transformed the West since the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. Early modern science is given more importance than in most other treatments and the 19th century demographic revolution is studied with a combination of formal models of population dynamics and historical analysis. The authors argue that once sustained growth was established in the West, formal models can shed much light on its subsequent behaviour. They build non-conventional, dynamic, non-stationary equilibrium models of GPT-driven growth that incorporate a range of phenomena that their historical studies show to be important but which are excluded from other GPT models in the interests of analytical tractability. The book concludes with a study of the policy implications that follow from their unique approach.

A Brookings Institution Press and British-North American Committee publication Two hundred years ago, the first Industrial Revolution sparked a dramatic acceleration in the quantity of goods and services available to the average citizen--a trend of steadily increasing real income per capita that continues to this day. Since that time, economists have struggled to develop systematic explanations for what caused the sudden, rapid increase, why the economy keeps growing, and why the rate of growth varies in different time periods and nations. In this book, F. M. Scherer traces the evolution of economic growth theory from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Emphasizing technological change as the most crucial dynamic force for growth, Scherer analyzes early hypotheses that paid little attention to new technologies, follows the emergence of theories that increasingly emphasized technological change, and reviews the current state of economic growth theory. Pointing out a lack of solid microbehavioral foundations to support contemporary "new growth" ideas, Scherer then supplies some foundational "bricks" concerning financial investment and human capital, and concludes by exploring the prospects for sustaining rapid growth into the next century.