Has Creative Destruction Become More Destructive?

John Komlos

No 4941, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction as the engine of capitalist development is well-known. However, that the destructive part of creative destruction is a social cost and therefore biases our estimate of the impact of the innovation on NNP and on welfare is hardly acknowledged, with the exception of Witt (1996). We conjecture that recently the new technologies are often creating products which are close substitutes for the ones they replace whose value depreciates substantially in the process of destruction. Consequently, the contribution of recent innovations to NNP and to welfare is likely biased upward. This note calls for a research agenda to estimate and decompose innovations into their creative and destructive components.

Keywords: Schumpeter; creative destruction; innovation; technological change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E01 O10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Has Creative Destruction become more Destructive? (2016)
Working Paper: Has Creative Destruction become more Destructive? (2016)
Working Paper: Has Creative Destruction Become More Destructive? (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4941

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