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Innovation

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Abstract

Economists of all descriptions have accepted that new products and new processes are the main source of dynamism in capitalist development. But relatively few have stopped to examine in depth the origins of such innovations or the consequences of their adoption. Most have preferred, in Rosenberg’s (1982) apt description, not to look ‘inside the black box’, but to leave that task to technologists and historians, preferring to concentrate their own efforts on ‘ceteris paribus’ models, which relegate technical and institutional change to the role of exogenous variables.

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Freeman, C. (2018). Innovation. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_740

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