Overview
Technological innovation has been a primary engine of human progress and advancement. But the exponential acceleration of technological change raises profound issues for individuals, the economy, and society. Traditional economics views growth as an aggregate phenomenon and leaves the major driver of growth - the advancement of human knowledge - largely unexplained. INET Oxford, in collaboration with a number of scholars around the world, is leading several projects that are attempting to develop a bottom-up theory of growth that is empirically grounded and has a truly endogenous view of innovation.
Questions include the impact of automation and AI on the future of work, technological dislocations across industries and geographies, growing concentrations of power amongst technology companies, and implications of technology for how we measure, organise, and regulate the economy. INET Oxford researchers are exploring these issues as well as working at a fundamental level to understand what drives technological progress, and how networks of knowledge evolve and create growth in the economy. Some of the practical and policy applications of this work include analyses of what jobs and geographies are at risk to technological disruption, how might we better forecast technological progress, how technology might accelerate the transition to a green economy, and how policymakers might develop more effective strategies for ensuring technological change leads to widely shared advancements in human wellbeing.
