The Role of Demand in Technological Change

ISBN-13: 9783848427680 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 224 str.

M. Abraham Garc A-Torres

Opis

This book analyses the role of consumer demand on technical change. Using a variety of techniques and approaches it discusses how successful innovations change consumers options. While focusing on product innovation, the thesis is structured as four independent papers. We initially reflect from a microeconomic perspective on the evolution of preferences over time. A microeconomic model is introduced in which the consumer maximizes utility, taking decisions in which new possibilities interact with earlier purchasing habits. Habit formation and the novelty associated with new goods are two concepts that explain this dynamic consumer behaviour. The model explains a situation in which technically good innovative products can fail due to a lack of novelty value. Habit formation is analysed in a macroeconomic growth model. Working with non-homothetic preferences in a Dixit and Stiglizt framework, the model introduces creative destruction from the demand side.

O autorze

Abraham Garcia is a researcher on the field of Technological Change and Economics. Main interests are Econometrics, Demand and Innovation. In 2009 defended his thesis in UNU-MERIT(Maastricht), then move to work as a researcher for EPFL (Lausanne) and now is working for the European Commission as a scientist in Seville.