On evolutionary technological change and economic growth: Lakatos as a starting point for appraisal

Abstract

This paper proposes a discussion on evolutionary technological change and economic growth theory, using the Lakatosian Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes as an appraisal criterion. Since the persistence of some inflexibility in this approach made it difficult to capture fundamental features of the scientific undertaking at hand, an alternative hypothesis was explored, that developed by Hoover (Scientific research program or tribe? A joint appraisal of Lakatos and the new classical macroeconomics. In: de Marchi N, Blaug M (eds) Appraising economic theories: studies in the methodology of research programmes. Edward Elgar, Aldershot, 1991). This latter framework is used here not as a formal methodology but rather as a language to find patterns in these theories. This exercise evolved then towards a number of considerations on the confrontation between these evolutionary theories particularly in terms of that which can be seen (in a loose sense) as their “rival research programme”, the new neoclassical growth models.