Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 German Economics as Development Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to World War II
- Chapter 2 The Role of the State in Economic Growth
- Chapter 3 A Brief Introduction to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626– 1692)
- Chapter 4 Exploring the Genesis of Economic Innovations: The Religious Gestalt-Switch and the Duty to Invent as Preconditions for Economic Growth (with Arno Daastøl)
- Chapter 5 Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717– 1771): The Life and Times of an Economist Adventurer
- Chapter 6 Jacob Bielfeld's “On the Decline of States” (1760) and Its Relevance for Today
- Chapter 7 Raw Materials in the History of Economic Policy; or, Why List (the Protectionist) and Cobden (the Free Trader) Both Agreed on Free Trade in Corn
- Chapter 8 Compensation Mechanisms and Targeted Economic Growth: Lessons from the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 9 Karl Bücher and the Geographical Dimensions of Techno-Economic Change: Production-Based Economic Theory and the Stages of Economic Development
- Chapter 10 Austrian Economics and the Other Canon: The Austrians between the Activistic-Idealistic and the Passivistic-Materialistic Traditions of Economics
- Chapter 11 Nietzsche and the German Historical School of Economics (with Sophus A. Reinert)
- Chapter 12 Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter (with Hugo Reinert)
- Chapter 13 Schumpeter in the Context of Two Canons of Economic Thought
- Chapter 14 The Role of Technology in the Creation of Rich and Poor Nations: Underdevelopment in a Schumpeterian System
- Chapter 15 Towards an Austro–German Theory of Uneven Economic Development? A Plea for Theorising by Inclusion
- Chapter 16 The Qualitative Shift in European Integration: Towards Permanent Wage Pressures and a ‘Latin-Americanization’ of Europe? (with Rainer Kattel)
- Chapter 17 Primitivization of the EU Periphery: The Loss of Relevant Knowledge
- Chapter 18 Mechanisms of Financial Crises in Growth and Collapse: Hammurabi, Schumpeter, Perez, and Minsky
- Chapter 19 Full Circle: Economics from Scholasticism through Innovation and Back into Mathematical Scholasticism: Reflections on a 1769 Price Essay: “Why Is It That Economics So Far Has Gained So Few Advantages from Physics and Mathematics?”
- Chapter 20 Werner Sombart (1863– 1941) and the Swan Song of German Economics
- Index
Chapter 14 - The Role of Technology in the Creation of Rich and Poor Nations: Underdevelopment in a Schumpeterian System
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2019
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 German Economics as Development Economics: From the Thirty Years' War to World War II
- Chapter 2 The Role of the State in Economic Growth
- Chapter 3 A Brief Introduction to Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff (1626– 1692)
- Chapter 4 Exploring the Genesis of Economic Innovations: The Religious Gestalt-Switch and the Duty to Invent as Preconditions for Economic Growth (with Arno Daastøl)
- Chapter 5 Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1717– 1771): The Life and Times of an Economist Adventurer
- Chapter 6 Jacob Bielfeld's “On the Decline of States” (1760) and Its Relevance for Today
- Chapter 7 Raw Materials in the History of Economic Policy; or, Why List (the Protectionist) and Cobden (the Free Trader) Both Agreed on Free Trade in Corn
- Chapter 8 Compensation Mechanisms and Targeted Economic Growth: Lessons from the History of Economic Policy
- Chapter 9 Karl Bücher and the Geographical Dimensions of Techno-Economic Change: Production-Based Economic Theory and the Stages of Economic Development
- Chapter 10 Austrian Economics and the Other Canon: The Austrians between the Activistic-Idealistic and the Passivistic-Materialistic Traditions of Economics
- Chapter 11 Nietzsche and the German Historical School of Economics (with Sophus A. Reinert)
- Chapter 12 Creative Destruction in Economics: Nietzsche, Sombart, Schumpeter (with Hugo Reinert)
- Chapter 13 Schumpeter in the Context of Two Canons of Economic Thought
- Chapter 14 The Role of Technology in the Creation of Rich and Poor Nations: Underdevelopment in a Schumpeterian System
- Chapter 15 Towards an Austro–German Theory of Uneven Economic Development? A Plea for Theorising by Inclusion
- Chapter 16 The Qualitative Shift in European Integration: Towards Permanent Wage Pressures and a ‘Latin-Americanization’ of Europe? (with Rainer Kattel)
- Chapter 17 Primitivization of the EU Periphery: The Loss of Relevant Knowledge
- Chapter 18 Mechanisms of Financial Crises in Growth and Collapse: Hammurabi, Schumpeter, Perez, and Minsky
- Chapter 19 Full Circle: Economics from Scholasticism through Innovation and Back into Mathematical Scholasticism: Reflections on a 1769 Price Essay: “Why Is It That Economics So Far Has Gained So Few Advantages from Physics and Mathematics?”
- Chapter 20 Werner Sombart (1863– 1941) and the Swan Song of German Economics
- Index
Summary
Introduction
There is a growing awareness of the role of technology in creating economic growth. A large research programme by the OECD — TEP (Technology and Economy) — recently brought this issue, and the underlying evolutionary theory of economic growth, into focus. However, the insights of Schumpeterian or evolutionary economics have so far not been used to study the problems of underdevelopment, only to study the growth problems of the industrialized nations. This paper is, as far as this writer is aware, the first attempt to use Schumpeterian analysis of technological change to explain poverty and underdevelopment. ‘Schumpeterian poverty’ indeed sounds like a contradiction in terms.
The aim of this paper is to show that the dynamics of Schumpeterian economics, in addition to explaining the creation of wealth, also implicitly contain the elements of a theory of relative poverty. It attempts to explain the role of technological change in the creation of what is labelled ‘Schumpeterian underdevelopment’. It is argued that the German tradition of economics, of which Schumpeter is a part, has always encompassed the necessary elements of a theory of uneven growth. List, Marx and Schumpeter have all emphasized different aspects of this uneven growth. To all of them, technological change was at the core of their theories. This contrasts sharply with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, where technological change has been neglected. As a consequence of this, particularly since the 1890s, Anglo-Saxon economics has produced theories of growth and trade which imply even growth, a converging distribution of world activity and income (factorprize equalization).
The organization of the paper is as follows. The next section contrasts Anglo-Saxon and German economic traditions from the point of view of theories of uneven growth vs theories of even growth. Then the question of the relationship between technological change and underdevelopment is raised, and two key mechanisms which create uneven distribution of the gains from technological change are identified. These are: the consequences of the extremely uneven advance of the ‘technological frontier’; and classical and collusive spreads of technological gains. The next section shows how these mechanisms work to create three cases of ‘Schumpeterian underdevelopment’ in the Caribbean. The following section claims that the aspects of technological change identified earlier may create conflicting interests between the two parts that every individual plays in economic life, that of producer and that of consumer.
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- The Visionary Realism of German EconomicsFrom the Thirty Years’ War to the Cold War, pp. 431 - 456Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2019