The Sources of Invention

The Sources of Invention PDF Author: John Jewkes
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349000159
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
A study of the causes and consequences of industrial innovation through the inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Sources of Invention

The Sources of Invention PDF Author: John Jewkes
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349000159
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 383

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Book Description
A study of the causes and consequences of industrial innovation through the inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Technology Pork Barrel

The Technology Pork Barrel PDF Author: Linda R. Cohen
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 9780815723684
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
American public policy has had a long history of technological optimism. The success of the United States in research and development contributes to this optimism and leads many to assume that there is a technological fix for significant national problems. Since World War II the federal government has been the major supporter of commercial research and development efforts in a wide variety of industries. But how successful are these projects? And equally important, how do economic and policy factors influence performance and are these influences predictable and controllable? Linda Cohen, Roger Noll, and three other economists address these questions while focusing on the importance of R&D to the national economy. They examine the codependency between technological progress and economic growth and explain such matters as why the private sector often fails to fund commercially applicable research adequately and why the government should focus support on some industries and not others. They also analyze political incentives facing officials who enact and implement programs and the subsequent forces affecting decisions to continue, terminate, or redirect them. The central part of this book presents detailed case histories of six programs: the supersonic transport, communications satellites, the space shuttle, the breeder reactor, photovoltaics, and synthetic fuels. The authors conclude with recommendations for program restructuring to minimize the conflict between economic objectives and political constraints.

The Rise of Law and Economics

The Rise of Law and Economics PDF Author: George L. Priest
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000701174
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
This is a history—though, intentionally, a brief history—of the rise of law and economics as a field of thought in the U.S. college and law school academy, though the field has expanded to Europe and South America and will expand further as other legal systems develop. This book explains the origins of the field and the sources of its growth during its formative period. It describes the intellectual roots of the field, and the field’s relationship to the understanding of the role of the legal system in directing the functioning of the economy. It describes the effect of the Great Depression and the expansion of governmental power on advancing the functional approach. The book then addresses the work of Aaron Director, during the late 1950s, on focusing economic analysis as a means of understanding the effects of the legal and regulatory system on the allocation of resources in the society. Then it turns to the subsequent intellectual founders of the field—Ronald Coase, Guido Calabresi, and Richard Posner—and attempts to explain the significance of their work. It also discusses the efforts of Robert Bork and Henry Manne toward the influence of law and economics on public policy. The book ends with the founding of the American Law and Economics Association in 1991. This is an essential companion to law and economics texts for undergraduate law and economic students and, especially, a general supplement to first-year casebooks for law school students.

Convergence of Productivity

Convergence of Productivity PDF Author: William J. Baumol
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195083903
Category : Comparative economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
This collection of original articles looks at the convergence hypothesis, which asserts that since the Second World War, industrial countries were growing increasingly homogeneous in terms of productivity, technology, and per capita incomes. The book examines patterns displayed by individual industries within countries as well as the aggregate economies, influences that underlie the process of convergence, and the role that convergence has played and promises to play in the future. Contributors include: Moses Abramovitz, Alice M. Amsden, Magnus Blomstrom, David Dollar, Takashi Hikino, Gregory Ingram, William Lazonick, Frank Lichtenberg, Robert E. Lipsey, Angus Maddison, Gavin Wright, and Mario Zejan.

On the Reappraisal of Microeconomics

On the Reappraisal of Microeconomics PDF Author: Robert U. Ayres
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1845427947
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Offers an alternative approach that overcomes most of the objections to orthodox theory, whilst offering some additional advantages.

Second Great Emancipation: Mech.cottonpicker, Black Migration & Modern South (c)

Second Great Emancipation: Mech.cottonpicker, Black Migration & Modern South (c) PDF Author: Donald Holley
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
ISBN: 9781610753678
Category : African American agricultural laborers
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
"Development of the mechanical cotton picker not only made possible the continuation of cotton cultivation in the post-plantation era, it helped free the region of Jim Crow laws as political power was relocated from farms to cities and thereby opened the door for the civil rights movement of the 1950s. Just as President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed African Americans from chattel slavery, the mechanical cotton picker freed laborers from the drudgery of the cotton harvest and brought the agricultural South into a period of prosperity."--Jacket

Searching for Safety

Searching for Safety PDF Author: Aaron Wildavsky
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351316222
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
Protecting ourselves against the risks associated with modern technologies has emerged as a major public concern throughout the industrialized world. Searching for Safety is unique in its exposition of a theory that explains how and why risk taking makes life safer and exposes the high risk of avoiding change. The book covers a wide range, including how the human body, as well as plants, animals, and insects, cope with danger. Wildavsky asks whether piling on safety measures actually improves safety. While he agrees that society should sometimes try to prevent large-scale harm, he explains why a strategy of resilience—learning from error how to bounce back in better shape—is usually better. His intention is to shift the debate about risk from passive prevention of harm to an active search for safety. This book will be of special interest to those concerned with risk involving technology, health, safety, environmental protection, regulation, and more.

Technological Innovation and Economic Performance

Technological Innovation and Economic Performance PDF Author: Benn Steil
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400824877
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Information technology accounts for over one-third of recent U.S. GDP growth and nearly two-thirds of corporate capital investment. ''The New Economy'' appears omnipresent, but little is actually known about its workings. This seminal volume brings together the research and critical thinking of many of the world's top macro and micro economists to provide a unique, multifaceted perspective. Through the use of detailed, up-to-date country and industry studies, this book provides the most authoritative and detailed analysis ever assembled into the causes of technological innovation and its relationship to economic performance. The country studies cover the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the Nordic states. Nine industry studies examine the Internet, computers and semiconductors, banking, securities trading, venture capital, energy, agricultural biotechnology, pharmaceutical biotechnology, and automobiles. Commissioned and brought together for the research project by the world-renowned Council on Foreign Relations, the authors have produced one of the most important compendia in applied economics to be published in recent times. The contributors are Charles Calomiris, Ian Domowitz, Robert Evenson, Charles Fine, Robert Gordon, Richard Langlois, Josh Lerner, Markku Malkamäki, Patrick Messerlin, Joel Mokyr, David Mowery, Richard R. Nelson, Stephen Nickell, Gary Pisano, Adam Posen, Daniel Raff, Horst Siebert, Timothy Simcoe, Benn Steil, Michael Stolpe, John Van Reenen, David Victor, and Matti Virén.

The Evolution of Technology

The Evolution of Technology PDF Author: George Basalla
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316101584
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This book presents an evolutionary theory of technological change based upon recent scholarship in the history of technology and upon relevant material drawn from economic history and anthropology. It challenges the popular notion that technology advances by the efforts of a few heroic individuals who produce a series of revolutionary inventions owing little or nothing to the technological past. Therefore, the book's argument is shaped by analogies taken selectively from the theory of organic evolution, and not from the theory and practice of political revolution. Three themes appear, and reappear with variations, throughout the study. The first is diversity: an acknowledgment of the vast numbers of different kinds of made things (artifacts) that have long been available to humanity; the second is necessity: the belief that humans are driven to invent new artifacts in order to meet basic biological requirements such as food, shelter, and defense; and the third is technological evolution: an organic analogy that explains both the emergence of novel artifacts and their subsequent selection by society for incorporation into its material life without invoking either biological necessity or technological progress. Although the book is not intended to provide a strict chronological account of the development of technology, historical examples - including many of the major achievements of Western technology: the waterwheel, the printing press, the steam engine, automobiles and trucks, and the transistor - are used extensively to support its theoretical framework. The Evolution of Techology will be of interest to all readers seeking to learn how and why technology changes, including both students and specialists in the history of technology and science.

Supreme Court Economic Review, Volume 23

Supreme Court Economic Review, Volume 23 PDF Author: Todd J. Zywicki
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022634116X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
Supreme Court Economic Review is a faculty-edited, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary series that applies world class economic and legal scholarship to the work of the Supreme Court of the United States. Contributions typically provide an economic analysis of the events that generated the Court's cases, its functioning as an organization, the reasoning the Court employs in reaching its decisions, and the societal impact of these verdicts. Beyond academic analysis, SCER contributors stimulate interest in the economic dimension of the Supreme Court and explore solutions for its manifold and complex problems.