John Jewkes – författare

Originally published in 1965, Professor Jewkes re-examines the principles which should determine the dividing line between the role of the State and the field of individual responsibility in economic life. Beginning with a brief account of how the functions of Government at the time had been widened in recent years and the rights of individuals curbed, he examines the fundamental difficulties in establishing any rational demarcation between the one sphere and the other in deciding what part the economist should play in helping to resolve the enigma. He next examines the outstanding failures and successes of public and private enterprise respectively in the Western World in recent years. Finally, he asks what are the dominant features of the economic world in which we live and what type of social institutions are most likely to enable us to make the best of our environment.The author’s general conclusion is that, although mixed economics will undoubtedly continue to be the rule, yet stability and economic growth will be endangered unless our social and economic institutions are flexible enough to provide continuous, and as far as possible spontaneous, adjustments to the unpredictable changes of a world in constant transition.

Originally published in 1965, Professor Jewkes re-examines the principles which should determine the dividing line between the role of the State and the field of individual responsibility in economic life. Beginning with a brief account of how the functions of Government at the time had been widened in recent years and the rights of individuals curbed, he examines the fundamental difficulties in establishing any rational demarcation between the one sphere and the other in deciding what part the economist should play in helping to resolve the enigma. He next examines the outstanding failures and successes of public and private enterprise respectively in the Western World in recent years. Finally, he asks what are the dominant features of the economic world in which we live and what type of social institutions are most likely to enable us to make the best of our environment.The author’s general conclusion is that, although mixed economics will undoubtedly continue to be the rule, yet stability and economic growth will be endangered unless our social and economic institutions are flexible enough to provide continuous, and as far as possible spontaneous, adjustments to the unpredictable changes of a world in constant transition.

The first edition of The Sources of Invention, published in 1958, has been described as "a classic in science policy which has had a very considerable influence on both economists and scientists in Europe and in the United States." The authors set out to study the causes and consequences of industrial innovation--one, if not the main, spring of economic progress. They examined the important inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to discover just how far recent inventions have emerged from conditions different from those of the past. The evidence collected threw light on many questions, such as the influence of large research institutions and the concept of teamwork, the arguments for monopoly in industry, and the possibility of predicting inventions.The second edition is a considerable enlargement of the first. To the original group of fifty-one case histories--which included Automatic Transmissions, Fluorescent Lighting, the Helicopter, Kodachrome, Polyethylene, Synthetic Detergents, the Transistor, and Xerography--have now been added ten other recent important cases, each of which has its own fascinating peculiarity: Air Cushion Vehicles; Chlordane, Aldrin, and Dieldrin; Electronic Digital Computers; Float Glass; the Moulton Bicycle; Oxygen Steelmaking; Photo-Typesetting; the Cure for Rhesus Haemolytic Disease; Semi-Synthetic Penicillins; and the Wankel Engine. A new chapter evaluates the relevant literature of the last ten years.

A study of the causes and consequences of industrial innovation through the inventions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.