Government Investment Necessary To Develop New General Purpose Technologies
In his book "Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?" Economics Professor Vernon W Ruttan of University of Minnesota argues that long term and large scale government investments are important in driving the development of general purpose technologies. Professor Ruttan analyzed the development of general purpose technologies in six areas and found that in all cases government financed projects had contributed to significantly speed up the development of new general purpose technologies, and in one case, nuclear power, the development had not been possible without large scale government funding.
The six areas analyzed and described by Professor Ruttan are:
- The US production system - Aviation technologies - Space technologies - Information technology - Internet technologies - Nuclear power
Read more about this topic: General Purpose Technology
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