SOURCES OF TECHNICAL CHANGE: INDUCED INNOVATION, EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND PATH DEPENDENCE
SOURCES OF TECHNICAL CHANGE: INDUCED INNOVATION, EVOLUTIONARY THEORY AND PATH DEPENDENCE
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技术变革的来源：诱发创新、进化理论和路径依赖
DOI：
10.4324/9781936331758-4
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发表时间：
1996
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
V. Ruttan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
V. Ruttan
20世纪60年代到80年代对技术变革的来源产生了很多新的理论和经验见解。在本文中，我认为三种先进的方法——诱导技术变革、进化理论和路径依赖——正在走向死胡同。诱导的技术变革过程是由企业（或公共研究机构）所处的经济环境的变化所驱动的。但它的内部机制，即学习和搜索过程，仍然是一个黑匣子。进化模型建立在企业行为理论的基础上，试图对黑箱的内部运作提供更现实的描述。路径依赖解释的优势在于它对特定微观历史事件顺序的重视。但它只适用于以规模回报递增为特征的网络技术——而且只适用于递增的回报耗尽之前。这三种方法应被视为技术变革来源的更一般理论的组成部分。在本文的后一节中，提出了可能采取的步骤，以发展技术变革来源的更一般的理论。
The 1960s through the 1980s were very productive of new theory and empirical insight into the sources of technical change. In this paper I argue that each of the three approaches that have been advanced--induced technical change, evolutionary theory and path dependence--is approaching a dead end. The induced technical change process is driven by changes in the economic environment in which the firm (or public research agency) finds itself. But its internal mechanism, the learning and search process, remain inside a black box. The evolutionary model builds on the behavioral theory of the firm in an attempt to provide a more realistic description of the internal workings of the black box. The strength of the path dependence interpretation lies in the importance it places on the sequence of specific micro-level historical events. But it holds only for network technologies characterized by increasing returns to scale--and only until the increasing returns have been exhausted. The three approaches should be regarded as components of a more general theory of the sources of technical change. In the later section of the paper steps that might be taken toward the development of a more general theory of the sources of technical change are suggested.