Knowledge and the wealth of nations
New ideas, more than savings or investment or even education , are the keys to prosperity , both to private fortunes , large and small, and to the wealth of nations-to economic growth, in other words, with its incalculable benefits for all.
By David Warsh, |
One of the oldest chestnuts in the inventory of our common sense is this: give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. To which it now must be added, invent a better method of fishing, or of farming fish, selling fish, changing fish (through genetic engineering ), or preventing overfishing in the sea, and you feed a great many people, because these methods can be copied virtually without cost and spread around the world. Of course, depending on the circumstances , your invention can make you rich as well.
New ideas, more than savings or investment or even education , are the keys to prosperity , both to private fortunes , large and small, and to the wealth of nations-to economic growth, in other words, with its incalculable benefits for all.
In the background are the intricate rules of the game that we summarise as the rule of law - and politics. Yet it was not until October 1990 when a University of Chicago economist named Paul Romer published a mathematical model of economic growth that the economics of knowledge at last came into focus, after more than two centuries of informal and uneasy presence in the background.
The title of the paper was at once simple and intimidating: ���Endogenous Technological Change.���
New ideas, more than savings or investment or even education , are the keys to prosperity , both to private fortunes , large and small, and to the wealth of nations-to economic growth, in other words, with its incalculable benefits for all.
In the background are the intricate rules of the game that we summarise as the rule of law - and politics. Yet it was not until October 1990 when a University of Chicago economist named Paul Romer published a mathematical model of economic growth that the economics of knowledge at last came into focus, after more than two centuries of informal and uneasy presence in the background.
The title of the paper was at once simple and intimidating: ���Endogenous Technological Change.���
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