Innovation and Growth: Schumpeterian Perspectives (MIT Press) - Softcover

The book is most successful in utilizing case studies to test theoretical propositions. The essay on the development of the steam engine is delightful. There are also studies on innovation in the ready-to-eat cereals industry, the effects of compulsory licensing on innovation in selected industries, and relationships between the size of the firm and the level of innovative output. The mixture of theory, history, and factual data illuminates the rationale for the behavior of firms and industries and the results of their innovation.-Finance & Development

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.