IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indcch/v17y2008i3p513-531.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scaling heuristics shape technology! Should economic theory take notice?

Author

Listed:
  • Sidney G. Winter

Abstract

In some economics textbooks production theory is developed axiomatically. The “divisibility axiom” presents a bold affront to realism. It distorts the static theory and forecloses some potential encounters with technological change. The article reviews propositions about geometrical scaling that have long been recognized as relevant to the realities studied in many fields, including industrial organization economics. The article concludes by sketching a program of reform for production theory that would make connections to Dosi's concepts of technological paradigms and trajectories (Dosi, 1982 ). Copyright 2008 , Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Sidney G. Winter, 2008. "Scaling heuristics shape technology! Should economic theory take notice?," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 17(3), pages 513-531, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:17:y:2008:i:3:p:513-531
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtn015
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wilson, Charlie, 2012. "Up-scaling, formative phases, and learning in the historical diffusion of energy technologies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 81-94.
    2. Kristiaan Kerstens & Ignace Van de Woestyne, 2021. "Cost functions are nonconvex in the outputs when the technology is nonconvex: convexification is not harmless," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 305(1), pages 81-106, October.
    3. G. Dosi, 2012. "Economic Coordination and Dynamics: Some Elements of an Alternative “Evolutionary” Paradigm," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 12.
    4. Funk, Jeffrey L. & Magee, Christopher L., 2015. "Rapid improvements with no commercial production: How do the improvements occur?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(3), pages 777-788.
    5. Markus Becker & Thorbjorn Knudsen, 2012. "Nelson and Winter Revisited," Chapters, in: Michael Dietrich & Jackie Krafft (ed.), Handbook on the Economics and Theory of the Firm, chapter 19, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    6. Dosi, Giovanni & Nelson, Richard R., 2010. "Technical Change and Industrial Dynamics as Evolutionary Processes," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 51-127, Elsevier.
    7. Ad van den Oord & Arjen van Witteloostuijn, 2018. "A multi-level model of emerging technology: An empirical study of the evolution of biotechnology from 1976 to 2003," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(5), pages 1-27, May.
    8. Bento, Nuno & Fontes, Margarida, 2019. "Emergence of floating offshore wind energy: Technology and industry," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 66-82.
    9. Ng, Pei-Sin & Funk, Jeffrey L., 2013. "When do new technologies become economically feasible? The case of three-dimensional television," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 22-31.
    10. Papachristos, George, 2017. "Diversity in technology competition: The link between platforms and sociotechnical transitions," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 291-306.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:17:y:2008:i:3:p:513-531. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/icc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.