Technological change: how technology relates to economic change

New inventions, better production techniques than produce more efficiently, better organization and management of firms, better training, better transport and communications all come under the banner of technical progress.

All these things allow a country to increase output.  Progress and investments often go together when old machines are replaced by new, more sophisticated machines that can work faster.

However, is the technological change able to explain the economical change? is it the more importante factor?

Joel Mokyr (1946) states that the technological change is a very important factor but not the decisive one.  The institutional framework is the fundamental factor of technological change through the incentives.

The technological change, according to this author, is any change in the use of the information, regarding to the production, with the end to increase the efficacy.  The consequence of this process is to produce more with less resources or the production of new and better goods (innovation; concept that Mokyr links up with diffusion).

When the institutional framework allows the flow of information, the diffusion is posible.  According to Mokyr the invention is an exogenous factor; if the diffusion exists, the innovation is posible because the invention has been diffused.

Lynn White (1907 - 1987) treats to explain how the stirrup invention is caused by the feudalism.  In many occasions the invention already exists, however there is no application for it, as consequence there is no technological change because there is no diffusion.

http://licn.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/09/technical-progress-john-dunn-consultant-ambertec-pe-pc.html

During the feudalism because of costs maintenance of the defence, the feudal lords decided to use the stirrup because the cost of horse rider maintenance is lower than a soldier; this is mainly because of the quantity of them to defence the lands, it is needed less horse riders than soldiers.

Bibliography:

Cameron R. (1992).  Historia Económica Mundial.  Alianza.  Capítulo 1.

North, D.C.,  y Tomas, R.P. (1989).  El nacimiento del mundo occidental.  Una nueva historia económica (900-1700).  Capítulos 1 y 2.