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The editors, aware of the recent work in evolutionary theory and the science of chaos and complexity, challenge the sometimes deterministic flavor of this subject. They are interested in uncovering the place of agency in these theories that take history so seriously. In the end, they are as interested in path creation and destruction as they are in path dependence. This book is compiled of both theoretical and empirical writings. It shows relatively well-known industries, such as the automobile, biotechnology, and semi-conductor industries in a new light. It also invites the reader to learn more about medical practices, wind power, lasers, and synthesizers. Primarily written for academicians, researchers, and Ph.D. students in fields related to technology management, this book is research-oriented and will appeal to all managers.
Why are old technologies persisted with after better alternatives have been invented? This book examines this question, a central concern of evolutionary economics, specifically focusing on renewable energy technologies. The concept of path dependence is used to analyse why and how technological development can become locked-in to inefficient ways of doing things. This book shows how lock-in can be avoided by the creation of new technological pathways. The chapters focus on the comparatively recent introduction of new wind turbine technologies for the generation of carbon free electricity. This case study provides valuable lessons in understanding the issues confronting inventors attempting to commercialise their new ideas in the form of innovations in the face of historically established conventional technologies. It is also set within the critical debate on climate change and the need to de-carbonise energy supplies in order to stop further man-made deterioration in the global environment. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.
Pioneering work on an important new approach to economics.
The theory of path dependence continues to attract great interest in a range of disciplines. An increasing number of scholars have started to explicitly use this theory for studying organizational inertia and institutional rigidities. This volume presents a collection of papers from various international conferences that address these issues.
Winner of the Barrington Moore Jr. Prize for the Best Book in Comparative and Historical Sociology from the American Sociological AssociationWinner of the Best Book Award in the Comparative Democratization Section from the American Political Science Association Despite their many similarities, Central American countries during the twentieth century were characterized by remarkably different political regimes. In a comparative analysis of Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Nicaragua, James Mahoney argues that these political differences were legacies of the nineteenth-century liberal reform period. Presenting a theory of "path dependence," Mahoney shows how choices made at crucial turning points in Central American history established certain directions of change and foreclosed others to shape long-term development. By the middle of the twentieth century, three types of political regimes characterized the five nations considered in this study: military-authoritarian (Guatemala, El Salvador), liberal democratic (Costa Rica), and traditional dictatorial (Honduras, Nicaragua). As Mahoney shows, each type is the end point of choices regarding state and agrarian development made by these countries early in the nineteenth century. Applying his conclusions to present-day attempts at market creation in a neoliberal era, Mahoney warns that overzealous pursuit of market creation can have severely negative long-term political consequences. The Legacies of Liberalism presents new insight into the role of leadership in political development, the place of domestic politics in the analysis of foreign intervention, and the role of the state in the creation of early capitalism. The book offers a general theoretical framework that will be of broad interest to scholars of comparative politics and political development, and its overall argument will stir debate among historians of particular Central American countries.
This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Politics in Time opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the social world. It explores a range of important features and implications of evolving social processes: the variety of processes that unfold over significant periods of time, the circumstances under which such different processes are likely to occur, and above all, the significance of these temporal dimensions of social life for our understanding of important political and social outcomes. Ranging widely across the social sciences, Pierson's analysis reveals the high price social science pays when it becomes ahistorical. And it provides a wealth of ideas for restoring our sense of historical process. By placing politics back in time, Pierson's book is destined to have a resounding and enduring impact on the work of scholars and students in fields from political science, history, and sociology to economics and policy analysis.
Implementing the Circular Economy for Sustainable Development presents the concept of the circular economy with the goal of understanding its present status and how to better implement it, particularly through environmental policies. It first tackles the definition of a circular economy in the context of sustainability and the differences in defining the concept across disciplines, including its fallibilities and practical examples. It then goes on to discuss the implementation of a circular economy, including the increasing variety of technological, mechanical, and chemical procedures to contend with and the need for stakeholder support in addition to improved business models. The second half of the book, therefore, presents tools, approaches, and practical examples of how to shape environmental policy to successfully implement a circular economy. It analyzes deficiencies of current regulations and lays the groundwork for the design of integrated environmental policies for a circular economy. Authored by an expert in environmental economics with decades of experience, Implementing the Circular Economy for Sustainable Development is a timely, practical guide for sustainability researchers and policymakers alike to move more efficiently toward a circular economy and sustainable development. - Presents a clear view of the critical components, features, and issues of a circular economy - Discusses a variety of practical examples from current policies in the context of a circular economy to better understand the challenges associated with its implementation - Analyzes strengths and weaknesses of current environmental policies and their interactions with innovations in engineering and science
This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.
Since the 1980s there has been a renewed interest in attempts to introduce a sense of history into economic literature. In this text, the authors argue that it is not possible to explain a state of the world without first analyzing the processes that lead to that state.