Economic Sources of Inventive Activity*

Jacob Schmookler

The Journal of Economic History, 1962, vol. 22, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: The fundamental conclusion of this paper is that technological progress is intimately dependent on economic phenomena. The evidence suggests that society may indeed affect the allocation of inventive resources through the market mechanism somewhat as it affects the allocation of economic resources generally. If this is true, then technological progress is not an independent cause of socio-economic change, and an interpretation of history as largely the attempt of mankind to catch up to new technology is a distorted one. Cultural lags undoubtedly exist in social history. The automobile—to use an obvious example—rendered obsolete many pre-existing social arrangements and behavior patterns. But the reverse is also true. New goods and new techniques are unlikely to appear, and to enter the life of society without a pre-existing,—albeit possibly only latent—demand. Even a longstanding demand may have been intensified shortly before a technique to satisfy it is invented. In addition to cultural lag, there exists technological lag—a chronic tendency of technology to lag behind demand.

Date: 1962
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (154)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

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:cup:jechis:v:22:y:1962:i:01:p:1-20_10

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().