IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v34y2010i1p153-171.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Technology and economic theory

Author

Listed:
  • J. Stan Metcalfe

Abstract

Technology and technological change play a central role in economics, whether in the theory of resource allocation or in the theory of growth and development. Yet the nature of technology is largely ignored in economic theory, it being considered sufficient to treat technology as a constraint on productive opportunities. This short essay delves a little deeper into the nature of technology and the material, energy and information transformation processes that it represents. A deeper understanding of technology leads to a deeper understanding of the main currents of technological advance and to the reasons why the development of technology and its application are so uneven over time and place. Copyright The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved., Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Stan Metcalfe, 2010. "Technology and economic theory," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 34(1), pages 153-171, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:34:y:2010:i:1:p:153-171
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/bep075
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Feng Dai & Songtao Wu & Ling Liang, 2014. "Capital and innovation aggregation with environmental pressure: An optimal evolution," Cogent Economics & Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 2(1), pages 1-16, December.
    2. Catherine E. A. Mulligan & Phil Godsiff, 2023. "Datalism and Data Monopolies in the Era of A.I.: A Research Agenda," Papers 2307.08049, arXiv.org.
    3. Anthony M. Endres & David A. Harper, 2012. "The kinetics of capital formation and economic organisation," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 36(4), pages 963-980.
    4. Dario Guarascio & Mario Pianta & Francesco Bogliacino, 2017. "Export, R&D and New Products: A Model and a Test on European Industries," Economic Complexity and Evolution, in: Andreas Pyka & Uwe Cantner (ed.), Foundations of Economic Change, pages 393-432, Springer.
    5. Philip Faulkner & Clive Lawson & Jochen Runde, 2010. "Theorising technology," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 34(1), pages 1-16, January.
    6. Hussain, Ammar & Batool, Irem & Akbar, Minhas & Nazir, Marina, 2021. "Is ICT an enduring driver of economic growth? Evidence from South Asian economies," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(8).
    7. Henning Schwardt, 2022. "Technology and social rules and norms in neo-Schumpeterian economics and in original institutional economics," PSL Quarterly Review, Economia civile, vol. 75(303), pages 385-401.
    8. D’Agata, Antonio & Mori, Kenji, 2012. "A dynamic linear economy with characteristic-based endogenous technical coefficients," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 195-204.
    9. Ben Lahouel, Béchir & Taleb, Lotfi & Ben Zaied, Younes & Managi, Shunsuke, 2021. "Does ICT change the relationship between total factor productivity and CO2 emissions? Evidence based on a nonlinear model," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    10. Foster, John & Metcalfe, J. Stan, 2012. "Economic emergence: An evolutionary economic perspective," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 420-432.
    11. Havas, Attila, 2016. "Recent economic theorising on innovation: Lessons for analysing social innovation," MPRA Paper 77385, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    12. Smita Srinivas, 2020. "Institutional variety and the future of economics," Review of Evolutionary Political Economy, Springer, vol. 1(1), pages 13-35, May.
    13. Foster, John, 2011. "Energy, aesthetics and knowledge in complex economic systems," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 88-100.
    14. Filippetti, Andrea & Peyrache, Antonio, 2011. "The Patterns of Technological Capabilities of Countries: A Dual Approach using Composite Indicators and Data Envelopment Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 1108-1121, July.
    15. Kanzola, Anna-Мaria & Papaioannou, Konstantina & Petrakis, Panagiotis, 2024. "Unlocking society's standings in artificial intelligence," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    16. Erkan Gürpinar, 2013. "Notes on Institutional Complementarities and Organizational Forms," Department of Economics University of Siena 678, Department of Economics, University of Siena.
    17. Haftu, Girmay Giday, 2019. "Information communications technology and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A panel data approach," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 88-99.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:34:y:2010:i:1:p:153-171. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.