Finance and Technological Change

by Enrico Santarelli

After the mid-1970s - when technology revealed itself as the driving force of a process of restructuring and innovation involving most industries in developed countries - economic theory underwent a profound revision in the attempt to explain this process. The present book is an attempt to broaden the economic explanation of technological change, moving from the assumption that development and diffusion of new technologies are closely related to the financial arrangements and institutions which prevail in any given historical period.