Among the many factors that have promoted economic change, I believe that technology or, rather, change in technology is the most prominent. I realize that it is dangerous to look for 'ultimate causes' in a world where everything seems to depend on everything else. But I believe that for the most part the economy, and ultimately the society, must adapt to the conditions that technology creates. If it cannot adjust to the challenges of changing technology, it fails.
The general, and at the same time dynamic, type of analysis still remains an unwritten chapter of economic theory, the claims of innumerable “model-builders” notwithstanding... The … theoretical approach, based on the combination of the complexities of a general interdependent system with the simplifying assumptions of static analysis, constitutes the background of this investigation.
This work may be best described as an attempt to construct a of the United States.
Economics today rides the crest of intellectual respectability and popular acclaim. The serious attention with which our pronouncements are received by the general public, hard-bitten politicians, and even skeptical businessmen is second only to that which was given to physicists and space experts a few years ago when the round trip to the moon seemed to be our only truly national goal.
Much of current academic teaching and research has been criticized for its lack of relevance, that is, of immediate practical impact... The trouble is caused, however, not by an inadequate selection of targets, but rather by our inability to hit squarely any one of them... The weak and all too slowly growing empirical foundations clearly cannot support the proliferating superstructure of pure, or should I say, speculative economic theory.
By the time it comes to interpretation of the substantive conclusions, the assumptions on which the model has been based are easily forgotten. But it is precisely the empirical validity of these assumptions on which the usefulness of the entire exercise depends... A natural Darwinian feedback operating through selection of academic personnel contributes greatly to the perpetuation of this state of affairs.