Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

General Purpose Technologies

2010; Elsevier BV; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0169-7218(10)02002-2

2210-8815

Timothy F. Bresnahan,

ICT Impact and Policies

This chapter selectively surveys the literature on general purpose technologies (GPTs), focusing on incentives and aggregate growth implications. The literature on classical GPTs (steam, electricity, computers) and on classical great economic transformations (industrial revolutions, the information age) are linked to the theoretical and empirical literatures. The implications of GPT analysis for understanding the history of productivity growth in the late twentieth century are taken up on the concluding remarks.