ABSTRACT
Technological change is perhaps the most efficient way to break the vicious circle of low productivity and insufficient incomes that characterizes most less developed economies. ‘Stage’ models of economic growth and development often include a radical improvement in technology as one of their most important features. By gradually substituting modern technologies for old-fashioned ones the deadlock is broken and growth is generated in the economy. Leaving the relevance of economic ‘stages’ aside, few economists today would be prepared to challenge the view that holds technological change to be one of the strongest forces affecting the course and speed of development. Most economic analysis, however, takes technological change as an exogenously given fact, without venturing into the question of what determines whether this change will or will not take place. Yet, it is a universal observation in less developed societies that attempts to change the traditional technologies meet with strong resistance.
