Evolutionary Economics and Technology Policy

Technology policy in an evolutionary world is policy for an experimental economy. To generate the conditions in which private firms engage in a wide range of innovation experiments is the way to promote the effective discovery of the superior products and methods of production on which rising standards of living depend. Market mechanisms, if operating in an open fashion, will ensure the diffusion of the better innovation experiments in that continuous chain from growth to elimination which marks the life history of any technology. If they do not, there lies another domain of policy. Thus economic variety drives economic selection and economic selection drives variety, to define the process which is the proper domain of technology policy.