Description

This collection of essays by Ruttan and Hayami spans their long career in the economics of technical and institutional change. At both a theoretical and empirical level, their analysis of induced innovation provides a solid foundation for understanding how and why technologies and institutions evolve in response to factors that constrain them. Can Economic Growth Be Sustained? provides a sweeping explanation of this process.

As scholars, Ruttan and Hayami's abilities and experiences complemented each other. Together, they had great success in working across contexts to integrate Western models of technological change and more holistic Asian perspectives on multi-factorial interaction. Their perspectives are wide ranging, covering large geographical areas and thoroughly examining the historical development of agriculture in the United States, Japan, and many other countries. This volume collects their most influential papers, from which much can be learned.

Features

• Although this book is essentially a collection of the published papers of Vernon Ruttan and Yujiro Hayami, the two editors have attempted to assess the significance of their studies in addressing issues of current global interests (i.e. the development of agriculture for poverty reduction in sub-Saharan Africa and the impacts of climate change on the role of agriculture).

Reviews

"Yujiro Hayami and Vernon Ruttan were two of the pioneering figures in development economics. This collection of papers traces their work across half a century of engagement with the problems and puzzles of agricultural development. This thoughtful volume brings together some of their best-known individual and collaborative writings, but it also includes a number of papers that were never widely disseminated."--Douglas Gollin, Professor of Economics, Williams College

"The extraordinary scholarship of Professors Ruttan and Hayami has left us with a rich empirically tested body of theory aimed at explaining technical and institutional innovations and their contributions to agricultural development and economic growth. The recent resurgence of interest in institutional economics, and the globalization of concerns over natural resources and the environment, make the papers in this volume just as relevant to today's scholars and policy communities as when they were first written."--Kym Anderson, George Gollin Professor of Economics, University of Adelaide, Australia

"The works of Yujiro Hayami and Vernon Ruttan, particularly their induced innovation thesis, have been one of the most influential paradigms during the past decades and continue to profoundly shape and reshape our current thinking on economic growth, international development, technical and institutional change and more recently economic history. This volume, edited by two of their close associates with personalized introductory chapters, brings together their best and classic papers as well as previously unpublished papers."--Debin Ma, Lecturer of Economic History, London School of Economics

"As a long-term fan of the work of Vernon Ruttan and Yujiro Hayami, I am delighted with the publication of their collected papers. They both had the personal experience and academic training to address the difficult question of how to sustain agricultural productivity. This is a book for the ages."--Elinor Ostrom, Senior Research Director at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University; Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, 2009

"Hayami and Ruttan's induced innovation model stands as a unique landmark in the existing studies on technological change and economic development over the past several decades. These collected papers provide stunningly comprehensive views on development and growth, integrating micro-level studies on incentives, market forces, and institutional changes, with aggregate-level economic analyses in an international perspective."--Yasuyuki Sawada, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Tokyo

"The papers collected in this book are seminal contributions of Vernon Ruttan and Yujiro Hayami, two giants in the history of development thinking, to the understanding of their mechanism and core functions of technological innovation and institutional change in development process. The book is must reading for development scholars and policy makers who are concerned about the issues of promoting agricultural growth and reducing poverty in developing countries."--Justin Yifu Lin, Chief Economist, The World Bank

Product Details

408 pages; 32 line drawings; 6-1/8 x 9-1/4; ISBN13: 978-0-19-975435-9ISBN10: 0-19-975435-7

About the Author(s)