Introduction

Abstract

Twenty-two years after its founding in Augsburg (1986), the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society held its 12th biennial conference, for the first time on the Latin American Continent. Subtitled the Southern Conference, the event took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from July 2nd to July 5th 2008 at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Among the 175 participants, around one third being PhD students, presented their work at the conference, indicating the attractiveness of the Schumpeterian Research Program for young scholars. The large fraction of participants from South America furthermore indicates the relevance of Schumpeterian ideas for catching-up and development strategies in economies of the Southern hemisphere. With this set-up, the conference strongly supported the dialogue among researchers sharing a common interest in the work of Joseph A. Schumpeter and demonstrated convincingly the global importance of innovation, structural change and entrepreneurship. The following subjects provide examples of topics addressed during the conference: the influence of technological and institutional change in development and growth, the impact of innovation on labor markets, the spatial distribution of innovation dynamics, and the meaning of knowledge generation and knowledge diffusion processes for development policies.