ABSTRACT
Mirowski's review of attempts to build models of knowledge within neoclassical economics concludes: Everyone seems to believe that knowledge is the key to economic success, and yet our most-developed schools of economic thought are mired in the most frightful muddles when it comes to modeling knowledge in an economic setting. In fact, it could be argued that the new profits are in giving away knowledge witness Twitter, Face book and Google: they make their money by providing people with access to valuable knowledge and networks. Knowledge is often rather expensive to produce because it requires a valuable resource to produce it, human thinking power, time and effort. New ideas are built on old ideas so the concept of cumulative knowledge is important. For policy and historical researchers, older knowledge is critically important. Human capital theory assumed that people were trained for a given job in a particular company and the value of that training was largely held by the company.
