Has Creative Destruction Become More Destructive?

Arbeitspapier

Schumpeter's concept of creative destruction as the engine of capitalist development is well-known. However, that the destructive part of creative destruction is a social cost and therefore biases our estimate of the impact of the innovation on NNP and on welfare is hardly acknowledged, with the exception of Witt (1996). We conjecture that recently the new technologies are often creating products which are close substitutes for the ones they replace whose value depreciates substantially in the process of destruction. Consequently, the contribution of recent innovations to NNP and to welfare is likely biased upward. This note calls for a research agenda to estimate and decompose innovations into their creative and destructive components.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 4941

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Measurement and Data on National Income and Product Accounts and Wealth; Environmental Accounts ; Economic Development: General
• Subject: Schumpeter ; creative destruction ; innovation ; technological change

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Komlos, John
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2014

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/102176
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:42 AM CET