Towards a More Historical Approach to Technological Change

Abstract

An economic historian does not get far in trying to interpret the comparative performance of national economies, without confronting issues surrounding the conceptualisation and measurement of technology. Thus I have found myself in recent years wrestling with the historical phenomenon known as 'American technological leadership', and this research experience has generated some views on more general matters. Vernon Ruttan's assessment of the current state of the field is relatively unfavourable. In his view, promising theoretical beginnings such as 'induced innovation' and 'path dependence' have not been successfully integrated with each other, nor with a programme of empirical research; approaches to 'endogenous growth' have not yet confronted the research and development process in all its richness and micro‐level detail. This critique has much validity with respect to the more abstract literature cited, but I would point, in contrast, to a number of promising recent efforts to transmute theoretical concepts into operational...