ABSTRACT OF PAPER

Title: Technical Change in Different Traditions of Economic Thought
Author: Kurz Heinz D.


In this paper (which is co-authored by several colleagues from the Graz Schumpeter Centre) a brief critical account of main chapters in the history of the treatment of technical change in economics is given. The paper starts with Adam Smith on the division of labour and David Ricardo on different types of technical progress, including machinery, followed by Marx's attempt to trace a falling tendency of the rate of porfit back to a particular type of technical progress, Next Schumpeter's view on innovations and "creative destruction" will be discussed. In all these approaches technical change was seen to emerge from within the economic system, i.e. endogenously, whereas in the marginalist tradition fro Cassel to Solow it was treated as an exogenous factor. Then follows a discussion of induced innovations and directed technical change from Hicks to Acemoglu. Evolutionary approaches from Nelson/Winter to Metcalfe and technical change in "new growth theory" are reviewed thereafter. Finally the concept of "general purpose technologies" will be dealt with and put into a larger historical context.

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