Cognitive Microfoundations for the Economics of Nonrival Goods

Dragos Simandan ()
Additional contact information
Dragos Simandan: Brock University

Economic Analysis, 2010, vol. 43, issue 3-4, 87-96

Abstract: This paper shows that the economics of nonrival goods cannot be fully comprehended without taking into account the role of intelligence differences among economic agents. The analysis focuses on Paul Romer’s contributions and explains that the study of the economics of ideas (memes) through an institutional lens alone misses the crucial economic implications of the interplay between genes and memes. Ideas appear to be nonrival if and only to the extent that we neglect wide individual differences in the capacity to appropriate ideas. Differences in intelligence among humans make the theoretically and politically appealing non-rivalry of ideas a practical falsehood.

Keywords: Paul Romer; innovation; imitation; nonrival goods; intelligence; creativity; knowledge spillovers; positive feedback loops (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.ien.bg.ac.rs/index.php/en/2010/2010-3-4 (application/pdf)

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:ibg:eajour:v:43:y:2010:i:3-4:p:87-96

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Analysis is currently edited by Mirjana Radovic Markovic

More articles in Economic Analysis from Institute of Economic Sciences 12 Zmaj Jovina St, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Zorica Bozic ().