Institutional Structure and Technological Change

Abstract

This study began as a survey of the literature on institutional change as it related to research and development. Since the survey was to exclude the literature on patents and on industrial organization, it was completed very quickly. That literature is practically nonexistent. The relationship, however, remains an interesting one. There is a significant and growing body of literature that bears on the theory of institutional change. In addition, economic historians have assigned technical change a central role in their studies of economic growth and have produced an extensive literature of the history of invention and innovation. Since institutional change is by its very nature a long-term process, work in economic history provides a laboratory for the study of that process. This survey uses some of the recent developments in the theory of economic change to examine more traditional work by economic historians in the hope of providing some insight into the relationship between institutional structures and technical progress.