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An Institutional Critique of Recent Attempts to Measure Technological Capabilities across Countries

This paper will be guided by recognition of two points, both of which feature prominently in institutional economics, or, as it is sometimes called, institutionalism. The first point has to do with the centrality of technology to economic growth and development, while the second concerns the inappropriateness of technological and other concepts developed in rich countries for the very different circumstances prevailing in the poorer countries. Let us deal with each of these recognitions in turn. For two of the best-known early proponents of institutionalism, Clarence Ayres and Thorstein Veblen, the role of technology in the dynamic processes of growth and development was nothing short of overridingly important. "Ayres," for example, "placed more emphasis on technology than on any other factor which contributed to economic development" (Cypher and Dietz 2004, 172). Indeed, "For Ayres, technological progress and economic development were virtually synonymous" (172). Writing at the turn of the century, Veblen was no less insistent on the importance of technology and technological change in the evolutionary process of cumulative change in the economy. He "emphasized the role of technological change, broadly defined to include both hardware and know-how. He stressed industrial arts to a point that bordered on determinism. The adage, necessity is the mother of invention, was reversed; invention had become the mother of necessity" (Clark and Juma 1990, 21 1). In the more recent "new institutional economics," moreover, some authors continue to emphasize the dominant role of technology in creating the potential for economic growth and development. To Douglass North, for example,