Most firms achieve perfective progress, incrementally improving commodities or productivity. But technological progress is concentrated in a few firms achieving metamorphic progress: forming or transforming industries with technological breakthroughs (e.g., biotechnology, lasers, semiconductors,...

In this survey, I discuss four sources of growth of knowledge: research, schooling, learning by doing, and training. In trying to disentangle what is important, I emphasize the following facts: (1) even the most advanced countries spend far more on adoption of existing technologies than on...

Is there a trade-off between fluctuations and growth? The empirical evidence is mixed, with some studies (Kormendi and Meguire (1985)) finding a positive relationship, while others (Ramey and Ramey (1995)) finding the a negative one. Our objective in this paper is to understand how fundamental...

Is financial innovation necessary for sustaining economic growth? To address this question, we build a Schumpeterian model in which entrepreneurs earn profits by inventing better goods and profit-maximizing financiers arise to screen entrepreneurs. The model has two novel features. First,...

In this paper we study the implications of general-purpose technological growth for asset prices. The model features two types of shocks: "small", frequent, and disembodied shocks to productivity and "large" technological innovations, which are embodied into new vintages of the capital stock....

I discuss the concept and empirical importance of international technology diffusion from the point of view of recent work on endogenous technological change. In this literature, technology is viewed as technological knowledge. I first review the major concepts, and how international technology...

A satisfactory account of the postwar growth experience of the United States should be able to come to terms with the following three facts: 1. Since the early 1970's there has been a slump in the advance of productivity. 2. The price of new equipment has fallen steadily over the postwar period....

Why do economies exhibit sustained growth in per capita income? This paper argues that endogenous fertility and increasing returns to scale are the fundamental ingredients in understanding endogenous growth. Endogenous fertility leads the scale of the economy to grow over time. Increasing...

We present a model of growth and technology transfer based on the idea that technologies are specific to particular combinations of inputs. We argue that this model is more realistic than the usual specification, in which an improvement in any technique for producing a given good improves all...