Global Dimensions of Technological Change

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The purpose of this research is to analyze the technological implications of globalization. Globalization is defined as a two pronged process moving toward the creation of a world-wide integrated economy. This process consists of the integration of factor and commodity markets and the international coordination of economic policies necessitated by global environmental problems, the growing need for product standards, and ever tighter macroeconomic linkages. Globalization affects all stages of technological creativity-- initial invention, survival, and diffusion. The over arching theme of this project is extremely important because it focuses on the issue of how globalization might affect the rate of invention, the diversity of new inventions, their likely survival, and their diffusion. The research will first develop evolutionary models of decreasing diversity that draw directly on the growing literature that recognizes technological change as an evolutionary process. An historical analysis of the relation between institutions and technological change suggests that a certain level of inter- economy competitiveness is essential for the preservation of technological creativity. The second part of the project will analyze the history of technology after 1871 from this point of view. Third, the project will focus on the political economy of technological progress by describing and analyzing resistance to it, using both historical and simulation techniques. This research is likely to suggest that a multitude of competitive economies is the best guarantee against such resistance. How globalization might affect this resistance will also be analyzed.