Technological evolution as creative destruction of process heterogeneity: evidence from US plant-level data

Jurgen Essletzbichler and David Rigby

Economic Systems Research, 2005, vol. 17, issue 1, 25-45

Abstract: Change in evolutionary economics is predicated on the creative destruction of variety. Despite the importance of the concept of variety, or heterogeneity, in evolutionary economic theory, empirical work that examines the character of variety - its extent and its persistence - is still scarce. Drawing on unpublished, micro-level data from the US Bureau of the Census, this paper examines the characteristics of process heterogeneity in selected US manufacturing industries. More specifically the paper has three goals. First, to demonstrate that heterogeneity in plant technologies exists and that it persists over time even within relatively mature industrial sectors. Second, to examine the veracity of the processes that generate and destroy heterogeneity in production technology within narrowly defined industries. Third, to link the heterogeneity of plant-level techniques of production to the pace and direction of technological change at the level of the industry.

Keywords: Evolutionary economics; heterogeneity; technological change; LRD (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09535310500034168 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ecsysr:v:17:y:2005:i:1:p:25-45

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CESR20

DOI: 10.1080/09535310500034168

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Systems Research is currently edited by Bart Los and Manfred Lenzen

More articles in Economic Systems Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().