Technical advance requires resources and is motivated by the quest for
profits; therefore, the rate and direction of advance is determined by
the economic system. Recognition of this fact has focused attention on
the performance of the market economy in the allocation of resources to
technical advance, and the consequent body of research is surveyed and
synthesised in this book. The theories of market structure and
innovation proposed by Schumpeter, Galbraith, Arrow, Schmookler,
Scherer, Mansfield, Phillips, Barzel, Kamien and Schwartz, Loury, Nelson
and Winter, Grabowski, Dasgupta and Stiglitz, and others are presented
in an integrated form. These theories deal with the nature of
competition, the incentives to innovate and the pace of innovative
activity under different market structures, and the existence of a
market structure that yields the most rapid rate of innovation. In
addition, the findings of seventy empirical studies dealing with various
facets of the microeconomics of technical innovation are presented. The
book is designed to be accessible to economists working in a variety of
situations - in universities, business and government - and who are
concerned with questions of technical innovation. It is also suitable
for senior-level undergraduates and first year graduate students
approaching the subject in a comprehensive way for the first time.
