Abstract
This paper is concerned with the role of tradition in the creative arts and sciences. Tradition is conceived as an intangible collective stock of capital. Additions to tradition are joint products of current output. These constitute an externality that at least in part cannot be internalized by means of property rights following from the interaction of tradition and innovation in the cognitive evolution of the creative arts. The first section explores the growth and transformation of tradition in the light of some elementary ideas of cognitive psychology. The second section explores the implications of tradition for resource allocation, and the last summarizes and points out policy conclusions.
I am indebted to Tom Sherwood of Fairhaven College, Bellingham, Washington, for useful discussions on several aspects of this paper and to the participants in the Royal Economic Society Specialist Conference on Government and In¬novation, Cambridge, England, 1975. The Faculty Senate Fund of the City College of the City University of New York provided funds for the preparation of the manuscript.
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McCain, R.A. (1981). Tradition and Innovation: Some Economics of the Creative Arts, Science, Scholarship, and Technical Development. In: Galatin, M., Leiter, R.D. (eds) Economics of Information. Social Dimensions of Economics, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8168-3_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-8168-3_15
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