Abstract.
Given the significance of technology in the course of socio-economic evolution, the driving forces behind the continuous accretion of technological knowledge deserve particular attention. This paper suggests a hypothesis about the motivational underpinnings of human technological creativity that is able to explain some long-term developments in human labor and technology. These motivational underpinnings are considered to being similar across human beings. They can therefore be assumed to imply some commonly shared elements of human preferences or wants.
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JEL Classification:
B52, J24, N30, O31, O33
The author is indebted to colleagues at the Friedrich Schiller University and the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Luciano Andreozzi, Leonard Dudley, Marco Lehmann-Waffenschmidt, and an anonymous referee of this journal for helpful comments.
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Cordes, C. Long-term tendencies in technological creativity - a preference-based approach. J Evol Econ 15, 149–168 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-004-0233-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-004-0233-9