Joseph Alois SCHUMPETER: A Reference Guide

357 Pages·1990·30.074 MB·English

by  Prof. Dr. Massimo M. Augello (auth.)

Massimo M. Augello
Joseph Alois
SCHUMPETER
A Reference Guide
Springer-Verlag
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London Paris Tokyo
Hong Kong Barcelona
Prof. Dr. Massimo M. Augello
Istituto di Studi Economici e Statistici
Facolt:i di Scienze Politiche
Universit:i Abruzzese degli Studi
1-64100 Teramo, Italy
ISBN-13: 978-3-642-76001-3 e-ISBN-13: 978-3-642-75999-4
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-75999-4
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10 my falher
FOREWORD
by
Frederic M. Scherer
(J.F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard University)
In the year 1883, two of the world's most productive economists
were born. Commemorating the event a century later, the U.S.
business magazine Forbes asked which of the two, J ohn Maynard
Keynes or J oseph Alois Schumpeter, made the greater, more endur
ing contributions. No doubt to the great surprise of its readers, it
concluded that Schumpeter was the greatest eeonomist of the 20th
eentury.'
In this volume professor Massimo M. Augello has done yeoman
service by assembling a eomprehensive bibliography of works by
Sehumpeter and, even more importantly, by other seholars pursuing
and elaborating the themes Schumpeter first artieulated. With ap
proximately 1,900 entries, it must beeome the primary reference for
those who wish to dig deeply in what has to be known as the
Schumpeterian vision.
During Sehumpeter's early years, the neoclassieal synthesis was
rapidly beeoming the dominant paradigm in eeonomic thought -- a
position it held for nearly a century. It was a synthesis because it
brought together two eontending sehools: the utilitarians, who em
phasized the demand side in the determination of eeonomic value,
and the labor value sehool, which emphasized the supply side. As one
of its leading figures, Alfred MarshaII, urged, neither side eould be
excluded from the analysis of how priees are formed and how they
guide the alloeation of resourees, just as neither blade of a seissors
ean be avoided if paper is to be eut cleanly.
Yet the neoclassical synthesis was essentially static in focus, an
alyzing how prices were set and resourees were alloeated at a moment
, J.W. Michae1s and N. GaU, "A Wagnerian Vision." Forbes, 1983, May 23, p. 130.
x
in time or, at best (in the domain of comparative statics), how mar
kets moved from one equilibrium state to another as basic supply
side or demand-side conditions altered for reasons largely outside the
realm of economic explanation. Schumpeter accepted that formu
lation as a starting point, but argued that it left out the heart and
soul of modern industrial capitalism -- the dynamic processes by
which wholly new products and production methods came into be
ing, disrupting existing equilibria and touching off a set of reperc
ussions, the end result of which was a permanent increase in human
welfare. As Schumpeter put it in his most popular book:
In capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not
(static price) competition which counts but the competition from the new
commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type
of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance) -- competi
tion wh ich commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which
strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing
firms but at their foundations and their very lives. This kind of competition
is as much more effective than the other as a bombardment is in compar
ison with forcing a door, and so much more important that it becomes a
matter of comparative indifference whether competition in the ordinary
sense functions more or less promptly; the powerful lever that in the long
run expands output and brings down prices is in any case made of other
stuff.2
Central to Schumpeter's schema was the entrepreneur, an heroic
figure who recognized new economic possibilities and carried out the
pioneering work to introduce them to the marketplace. Successful
entrepreneurship in turn blazed the trail for imitators, whose gradual
and then swarming intrusion simultaneously made the entrepreneur's
technological or organizational innovations available to an ever
broader public and undermined the basis of the pioneer's superior
profits. Out of these seminal notions Schumpeter developed inter alia
a theory of short and long business cycles, whose rising phases were
driven by intensive investment seeking to profit from implementing
innovations, and whose declining phases experienced falling invest
ment as widespread competitive imitation reduced the innovator's
and early followers' profitability, with the cycle reversing again as
entrepreneurs strove to break out of stagnant equilibrium conditions
through furt her innovation. In essence, Schumpeter sought to char-
J.A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper, 1942,
2
pp. 84-85.
XI
acterize the laws of motion by means of which capitalism operated
as the most powerful engine of economic progress known to man.
And through his writings, Schumpeter directed scholars' attention 10
phenomena they had largely ignored before: to dynamics rather than
statics, to the role of the entrepreneur, to the crucial role technolog
ical and organizational innovations play in generating economic
progress, and to the endogenous processes (" creative destruction")
through which capitalist economies evolve and reshape themselves
over time.
Schumpeter painted on a vast canvas and stressed eclecticism
over conformity to a rigid economic methodology. His ideas took
hold only gradually, but by the second half of the 20th century, it
had become clear that the technological dynamics central to his vi
sion were largely responsible for the vast observable differences in
material well-being among nations, with some lands growing rapidly
toward prosperity while others stagnated. More and more economists
began to work in the "Schumpeterian" tradition, sometimes ac
knowledging their debt to the master but often doing so only ob
liquely or not at all. In this volume Professor Augello has identified
hundreds of works more or less squarely in the Schumpeterian tra
dition. A dividing line is always necessary, and so many other publi
cations influenced indirectly by Schumpeter's teaching but failing to
acknowledge their intellectual roots could not be included.
Because his ideas and his methodology swept so widely, there is
no such thing as a clearly-defined Schumpeterian school in econom
ics comparable to the Walrasian neoclassical school, the Keynesian
school, the monetarist (e.g., Fisher-Friedman) school, or the game
theoretic (von Neumann-Morgenstern) school. Rather, Schumpete
rians, like their master, pick and choose the most appropriate
analytic tools offered by other schools to pursue their common in
terest in entrepreneurs hip and innovation as both cause and effect
of dynamic economic evolution.
In 1986 the International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society was
founded, following an initiative by Wolfgang Stolper and Horst
Hanusch, to join scholars of widely differing methodologieal, ideo
logical, and residential preferences for discourse on questions defined
by the Schumpeterian paradigm. The Society's newsletter and in
formal network helped Professor Augello to identify works in the
Schumpeterian tradition that might otherwise have escaped his care
ful research. Readers stimulated by the themes resonating in Profes
sor Augello's bibliography are welcome to apply for membership in
XII
the Society by contacting Professor Hanusch, the Society's
secretary-treasurer, at the University of Augsburg in West Germany.
F.M. Scherer
International Schumpeter Society
President 1988-1990
Contents
Introduction. ............................................................................... 1
Part I
The Literature on Joseph A. Schumpeter.
A Historical Assessment (1907-1989) ......................................... 17
1 The Data. ............................................................................... 21
2 An Overview.......................................................................... 30
3 The Schumpeterian "categories"............... .................... ........ 37
3.1 Biography............................................................................ 37
3.2 Methodology....................................................................... 45
3.3 Development... ... ...... ................................ ..... ........... ........ ... 56
3.4 Money................................................................................. 69
3.5 Cycle.................................................................................... 78
3.6 Sociology............................................................................. 87
3.7 Politics ................................................................................. 95
3.8 History ................................................................................. 104
Part 11
Works by Schumpeter ................................................................ 115
1 Books and Pamphlets ............................................................ 117
2 Articles, Reports and Book Reviews ..................................... 132
Works on Schumpeter ................................................................ 159
Author Index .............................................................................. 333
Subject Index.'. ........................................................................... 345