Dudley attempts to impose a pattern on the entire history of human civilization. He shows how the major transformations in the character of social life have been determined by eight significant innovations: four new ways of dealing with information - writing, printing, mass media and integrated circuits; and four new ways of organizing the applications of violence - metal weapons, artillery, steam transport and heavy cavalry. Military and informational technologies are so crucial because they are instrumental in holding states together, while innovation in itself tends to produce new...

Kaum eine wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Disziplin hat in den vergangenen Jahren das Denken in der Okonomie so stark beeinflusst wie die moderne Institutionenokonomik. Dieses Buch beinhaltet gleichermaen Theorie und Empirie der Institutionenokonomik: Auf das Herausarbeiten bestimmter theoretischer Konstrukte folgt jeweils die Anwendung auf ein reales Beispiel mit vertiefenden Ubungsaufgaben und entsprechenden Losungen.

What does it take for a society to be able to innovate? The question is crucial today when an increasing share of world patents are taken out by countries such as Japan, South Korea and China, which have limited energy resources and cultures very different from those in the West. However, most previous studies of the beginnings of industrialization have focused on the resources and institutions of Britain alone. As a result, they have missed the lessons to be learned from casting the net more widely so as to examine all regions of the North-Atlantic community. This book pinpoints the...