Innovation and Growth

by F. M. Scherer

Published 1 January 1984
These sixteen essays are drawn from a body of work strongly influenced by the thought of Joseph A. Schumpeter. They are particularly appropriate in a time when low rates of growth have become the norm in the Western world and much of the economic debate focuses on prescriptions for industrial regeneration. Each essay tests hypotheses derived from the Schumpeterian propositions that technological innovation gives capitalist economies their peculiar dynamics through a process of "creative destruction," that technological progress has radically increased real income per capita in Western industrialized nations, and that monopoly market structures and their pursuit are a powerful engine of technological progress.