Uncertainty and Technological Change

Authors

  • Nathan Rosenberg

Abstract

There is now widespread agreement that technological change is a main determinant perhaps the main determinant- of long-term economic growth. In spite of this fact, the process that generates new technologies, and the uses to wich they are eventually put, are poorly understood. Economic theorists typically build models involving "rational" decisionmaking in which no uncertainties exist. These models are not very useful because uncertainty is the central aspect of technological change. This paper adopts an historical approach and argues that history can provide important insights into the causes and consequences of technological change, of a kind that are unlikely to be realized by model-building exercises alone.

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How to Cite

Rosenberg, Nathan. 2017. “Uncertainty and Technological Change”. Revista De Historia Industrial — Industrial History Review, no. 6 (March):11-30. https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/HistoriaIndustrial/article/view/18242.

Issue

No. 6 (1994)

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 1994 Nathan Rosenberg

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