Items related to Technology, Growth, and Development
Synopsis
Technology, Growth, and Development is written by Vernon Ruttan, one of America's foremost economists, holder of a Ph.D. from Chicago, recipient of three honorary doctorates, and a widely published author of books and artciles. Since 1986, he has been Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota.
For several years Professor Ruttan has taught a course offered to both senior economics majors and MPA (Master of Public Administration) students at Minnesota, as well as a course offered to students in the School of Management and the University's well respected Institute of Technology. For an "advanced" text, Technology, Growth, and Development is remarkably user-friendly; it presupposes only a knowledge of intermediate (micro) economics, and some students take the author's courses with only principles of econmics. Because the content is relevant to students outside of economics (e.g. management and public affairs) it is important that technical requirements and prerequesites are not stringent. The book will have single-copy appeal for professional economists, managers, and policy analysts as well as academic economists.
Technology, Growth, and Development places technical change solidly within the context of modern growth theory; however, it goes beyond growth theory in its emphasis on both induced technical and institutional changes, e.g. the availability of resources caused by sever price movements and the relative price of labor and capitial and institutional innovations. This perspective is carefully developed in Part II, Chapter 4. (see below)
The book is organized in four parts.
Part I -- Productivity and Economic Growth, Chapters 1-2 show the role of technical change in economic development. Chapter 1 introduces the sustainability of economic growth including including constraints imposed by availability of natural resources, and environmental damage often resulting from growth. Chapter 2 introduces comparative rates in advanced industrial economies, Japan and the Near East, and poor countries, particularly in Africa. The author gives reasons for the slowdown of productivity growth in the US and other industrial nations in the last 25 years of the 20th century. He also examines "the natural rate of growth" dependent on labor force, savings rate, and technical change in light of "new" growth theory and historical experience.
Part II -- Sources of Technical Change, Chapters 3-5 address economic factors that influence the rate and direction of technical and institutional change, invention and innovation, the determinants of the rate and direction of technical change, and factors in the adoption, diffusion and transfer of technology. Chapter 4 focuses on the sources of technical change and institutional innovation that influence the rate and direction of technical change and their roles within the author's model of induced innovation.
Part III -- Technical Innovation and Industrial Change: Chapters 6-10. Development of general purpose technologies that have had impact on economic growth far beyond the originating industries: Agriculture (6); Electric Power (7); Chemical Industry (8); Computer and Semiconductor industries (9) and the Biotech Industries (10).
Part IV -- Technology Policy: Chapter 11-14 return to the opening themes of Chapters 1 and 2, e.g. the comparisons of rates of growth in differnt econmies and the sustainability of economic growth at the national and global levels. Chapter 11 looks at competitive models of American, Japanese, and German systems of technolgoy development; Chapter 12 examines technological change and its effect on environmental resources; Chapter 13 presents the loss of direction in US technology policy after the post WWII impliict "social contract" between government funding and the scientific community, to promote new weapons, medicine, materials, products and jobs; Chapter 14 shows the roll of technology in the transition to sustainable growth at the global level: Does sustainable development mean a richer, but dirtier, and more insecure world, or mutally beneficial convergence of growth among rich and poor countries?
Focus in this book is on technical change in the "good producing" industries, the source of material consumption, not the services industry (see Part III).
Author uses induced endogenous innovation interpretation of technical change, in which importance of institutional innovation is stressed (Chapter 4).
Prominence given to biological technology as it effects agriculture and health sectors, and the resultant concerns about sustainability of growth because of harmful effects of agricultural and industrial production on ecology of biosphere.
The heavy emphasis on growth theory is unusual in a book on technology and development. Often those interested in science and technology do not delve significantly into advances in growth theory and its dominant role in understanding technology, especially non-traditional "growth" concepts such as increasing returns, spillovers, and path dependencies. Growth theorists, on the other hand, often know little about underlying technology management, industrial economics, and policy analysis, of of which are presented in detail within this book.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Vernon W. Ruttan is Regents Professor Emeritus in the Department of Applied Economics and Adjunct Professor in the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. His research has been on technology development and economic growth. He is the author (with Yujiro Hayami) of
Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (1985); United States Development Assistance Policy (1996); and Technology, Growth and Development; An Induced Innovation Perspective (OUP, 2001).
Review
"This big book is the product of a lifetime of serious and creative scholarship. I can think of no other scholar who has worked more systematically, and with greater dedication, to illuminate the multiple and sometimes elusive aspects of technological change than Vernon Ruttan."--Nathan Rosenberg, Department of Economics, Stanford University
"Vernon Ruttan has written an encyclopedic volume on the role of technology in economic growth in both industrialized and poorer countries. The book contains a superb integration of the recent insights of new growth theory and detailed studies of the process of technological innovation at the microeconomic level. The extraordinary scope of the volume ranges from new insights on the extent to which the U.S. consumer price index is affected by technical change to a detailed examination of the development of the microprocessor. Intensive studies of developments in chemical industries, agricultural technology, and dozens of other industries provide the empirical underpinning for a masterful discussion of induced innovation. This book will be the starting point for all researchers interested in further studies in the area." --Howard Pack, The Wharton School, The University of Pennsylvania
"Worthy of a Nobel Prize."-Rondo Cameron, William Rand Kenan University Professor Emeritus, Emory University
"A necessary reading for all students interested in economic development."--Peter Chow, The City College of New York
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherOxford University Press
- Publication date2099
- ISBN 10 0195118723
- ISBN 13 9780195118728
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages640
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