Abstract
This paper concerns the interaction between technological creativity and political competition. The paper is based on the observation that technological progress encounters resistance from various groups that believe they stand to lose from innovation. These pressure groups will try to manipulate the political system to suppress successful innovation. Modelling this political struggle as a stochastic process with endogenous institutional adaptation is attempted using a simulation based on urn models. Under fairly general conditions, it can be shown that the single economy will move inexorably to an absorbing barrier of technological stagnation. This process is referred to as Cardwell's Law. The paper then proceeds to show whether Cardwell's Law also holds in a world in which a number of separate economies compete with each other. It is shown that in a world with multiple economies Cardwell's Law does not hold even if it holds for each economy separately. This is consistent with the historical observation that political competition may be conducive to technological progress.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 561-574 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | Research Policy |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 1994 |
Funding
Correspondence to: Joel Mokyr, Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2003 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. * 1 am indebted to Bruce Spencer for discussing the ideas in this paper at a much earlier stage, to Stanley Engerman and Ian Inkster for helpful suggestions, and to Edwin Denson for expert technical assistance. The financial assistance of National Science Foundation Grant SES 9122384 is grate-fully acknowledged.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Strategy and Management
- Management Science and Operations Research
- Management of Technology and Innovation
