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Stoneman, P. (Ed.) (1995) Handbook of the Economics of Innovation and Technological Change (Oxford, Blackwell Publishers), 583 pp. ISBN 0 631 19774 5 17.99.
Dodgson, M. & Rothwell, R. (Eds) (1994). The Handbook of Industrial Innovation (Aldershot, Edward Elgar), 453 pp. ISBN 1 85278 655 8 80.00.
Mansfield, E. (1995) Innovation, Technology and the Economy. The selected essays of Edwin Mansfield (Aldershot, Edward Elgar), vol. I, 327 pp. vol. II, 323 pp. ISBN 1-85898-035-6 880.00.
Rosenberg, N. (1994) Exploring the Black Box. Technology, economics, and history (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 274 pp. ISBN 0-521-45955-9 11.99.
Rosenberg, N. (1994) The Emergence of Economic Ideas. Essays in the history of economics (Aldershot, Edward Elgar), 188 pp. ISBN 1-85898 047-X, 39.95.
How many times have we read complaints about the fact that economists pay insufficient attention to technological change? In a recent critical survey, Freeman (1994) pointed out that `one of the continuing paradoxes in economic theory has been the contrast between the general consensus that technical change is the most important source of dynamism in capitalist economies and its relative neglect in most mainstream literature'. Stoneman, introducing this handbook, agrees that `until recently this field of study had been relatively neglected in mainline economics'. Note, please, the `until recently'. This implies that the situation has changed over the past few years. But by how much? And what more do we know as a result?
Certainly economists have devoted more attention to technological change over the last decade than they did over the previous three decades put together. Articles on innovation are now often published in mainstream economic journals, new specialized journals have started, conferences are held with increasing frequency, and a wealth of fresh and still largely unexplored statistical sources are now available. Indeed, the economics of technological change has become quite a trendy subject, able to be considered on a par with other fields of economics such as monetary theory, labour studies or international trade.
Two New Handbooks
The state of the discipline can be evaluated by a careful anaysis of the current literature. And certainly a good occasion to do this is offered by the simultaneous publication of two major handbooks in this field. They provide an almost complete overview of the current state of...