Economic and Sociological Explanation of Technical Change

Abstract

This paper seeks to identify tools to overcome the cleavage between economic and sociological analyses of technological change. Rejecting neoclassical economics because of the incoherence of the notion of profit maximisation, it examines the 'alternative economics associated with Simon, Nelson and Winter. Helpful though many of their ideas are, Nelson, Winter and Dosi are wrong to conceive of 'technological trajectories' as 'natural'

The paper calls for 'ethnoaccountancy' of technological change, the empirical study of how people actually reckon financially about technology (as distinct from how economic theory suggests they should reckon). It ends by arguing that the sociology of scientific knowledge has much to contribute to analysis of uncertainty, a topic central to technological change.