This will be my first foray into the world of blogging. I hope to be able to convey my thoughts in a way that makes sense to people. Paul Romer, at age 36 wrote a paper for the Journal of Political Economy called “Endogenous Technological Change” it was published in October 1990. It seeks to supplant and to build upon a paper written by Robert Solow and published in 1956. Dictionary.com defines endogenous as “proceeding, growing or developing from within” An interesting point that is made in Romer's paper is the distinguishing of technology as a non-rival, partially excludable good. Non-rival goods can be copied or shared. Excludable goods are able to be controlled in terms of access to them to some degree It is this definition and explanation of what kind of good technology is that has clarified and resolved some of the issues throughout history.
A for Will. But, what does it mean to be "non-rival" or "excludable"?
ReplyDeleteThis is good. Perhaps even a bit too long, but it's a long section.
What I'd add is that academics don't try to "supplant" others' work - the people who may be supplanted are likely to the ones who are the gatekeepers to getting your stuff published at all. So there's a real soft sell: you want to convince them that you've done something that they would have if they could.
In this case, what's important is technical change. In Solow, it came from outside his model (it was exogenous) while for Romer it came from inside his model (it was endogenous). Differentiating those ideas is a big part of what you'll learn this semester.