special issue: Knowledge, consumption, and endogenous growth

Richard Langlois

Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2001, vol. 11, issue 1, 77-93

Abstract: In neoclassical theory, knowledge generates increasing returns - and therefore growth - because it is a public good that can be costlessly reused once created. In fact, however, much knowledge in the economy is actually tacit and not easily transmitted -and thus not an obvious source of increasing returns. Several writers have responded to this alarming circumstances by affirming hopefully that knowledge today is increasingly codified, general, and abstract - and increasingly less tacit. This paper disputes such a trend. But all is not lost: for knowledge does not have to be codified to be reused and therefore to generate economic growth.

Keywords: Tacit; knowledge; -; Increasing; returns; -; Growth; theory; -; Knowledge; reuse; -; Codification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-01-22
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.de/link/service/journals/00191/papers/1011001/10110077.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted

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:spr:joevec:v:11:y:2001:i:1:p:77-93

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/191/PS2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Evolutionary Economics is currently edited by Uwe Cantner, Elias Dinopoulos, Horst Hanusch and Luigi Orsenigo

More articles in Journal of Evolutionary Economics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().