Economics and Technological Change: Some Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Abstract

Economic analysis has given rise to several conflicting accounts of technology and of the rate and directions of technological change. In this paper we examine some of the contrasting images of technology that have arisen in economics and we discuss some of the conceptual and methodological questions connected with the study of technological change (TC for short). We argue for a microeconomic approach in which TC is considered against the background of industrial, institutional and market structures. But we suggest that attempts to introduce into this framework cognitive models of scientific progress are doomed to failure, because of the fundamental differences between scientific and technological knowledge and the basic disanalogies between TC and scientific progress. In particular, we argue that the efforts of Dosi (1982), (1984) and others to treat technology and TC in a Kuhnian framework, by applying notions like technological paradigm, normal technology, and technological revolution, are misleading. By contrast, we hold that, given the influence of economic markets, industrial and institutional structures on the development of technology, it is more plausible to regard TC as a continuous and incremental process, rather than as suffering Kuhnian crises and revolutions.