Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages

Abstract

This work traces the long-term historical relationship between technical change and the behaviour of financial markets. Based on Schumpeter's theories of the clustering of innovations and with illustrations from the past two centuries, it explains why each technological revolution gives rise to a paradigm shift and a New Economy and how these opportunity explosions, focused on specific industries, also lead to the recurrence of financial bubbles and crises. By analyzing the changing relationship between finance capital and production capital during the emergence, diffusion and assimilation of new technologies throughout the global economic system, this book sheds light on some of the puzzling economic phenomena of our times.