ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses some advances - on both theoretical and empirical grounds - in the field of the economics of innovation and technical change. It analyzes their implications for the understanding of economic development, for the implications for development, and provides a summary view of the major characteristics of technology and technical change. The chapter suggests that some hypotheses on the factors which affect the dynamics of technological accumulation and on the linkages between industry-specific and country-wide processes of technological learning. A fundamental implication of the properties of technology and technical change is that there are widespread asymmetries in the technological capabilities between firms and between countries; these asymmetries correspond to equally uneven patterns of economic signals facing the economic agents. In a world characterized by technical change and transformation, the behaviors of the agents are most adequately represented by routines, strategies, meta-rules, and search processes.