The Impact of Science and Technology on Global Economic Growth
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Bibliographic details
- Authors: JOEL MOKYR
- Published: June 1, 2018
- Volume: 55
Overview
- Author: JOEL MOKYR, Robert H. Strotz Professor of Economics at Northwestern University.
- Publication: F&D Magazine, June 2018.
- Central thesis: Scientific breakthroughs and revolutionary technologies reinforce each other, enabling continued technological progress and potential for transformative economic growth.
Historical and conceptual framing
- Technological progress both directly affects productivity and amplifies scientific capability by providing better measurement, observation, and computation tools.
- Historical examples:
- Galileo’s telescope and Hooke’s microscope as enablers of the 17th century scientific revolution.
- Improved microscopy and lab techniques enabling the discovery of the germ theory.
- X-ray crystallography contributing to discovery of DNA structure and instrumental in 29 other Nobel-Prize-winning projects.
Powerful contemporary tools and their economic implications
- Fast computing and data techniques:
- Emergence of a new era of data science where machine-learning algorithms detect complex regularities beyond human intuition.
- Computers enable large-scale simulation to approximate solutions to complex equations, spawning computational research fields complementary to large-data processing.
- Quantum computing could increase computational power “by a substantial factor.”
- Artificial intelligence could become “the world’s most effective research assistant,” though concerns exist about replacing knowledge workers.
- Laser technology:
- Applications include cooling micro samples, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy for atomic-level chemical analysis without sample preparation, lidar for detailed 3D imaging, laser ablation for sample analysis without size or preparation constraints, and laser interferometers used to detect gravitational waves.
- Lidar contributed to revising estimates of pre-Columbian Maya civilization sophistication in Guatemala.
Century of biology: genomic and synthetic advances
- Rapid decline in genome sequencing cost:
- From $95 million per genome in 2001 to about $1,250 in 2015.
- Prominent techniques:
- CRISPR Cas9 improvements enabling base-pair editing in genetic sequences.
- Synthetic biology and cell-free production of proteins—ideas present for about a decade, with public awareness of potential more recent, though realization remains years away.
- Implication: 21st century characterized as “the century of biology” with revolutionary changes in manipulating living beings.
Materials science and nano‑technologies
- New materials potential:
- Advances allow design of synthetics with custom-ordered properties (hardness, resilience, elasticity).
- Development or perfection of new resins, advanced ceramics, new solids, and carbon nanotubes.
- Historical constraint: Past technological ideas often limited by available materials; modern material science reduces that constraint.
General-purpose technologies (GPTs) and diffusion
- AI, lasers, and genetic engineering qualify as GPTs with wide applications across production and research.
- GPTs typically require complementary innovations and investments and therefore take time to fully affect the economy.
- Expected outcome: When fully diffused, these technologies promise transformative changes in many dimensions of the human condition.
Key findings and observations
- Technology and science coevolve symbiotically: scientific researchers gain vastly more powerful tools, some incremental, some radical.
- Several contemporary tools (high-powered computers, lasers, advanced microscopes/telescopes) are analogous in historical importance to instruments that enabled earlier scientific revolutions.
- Predictive uncertainty: Some advances will be unforeseeable and others will disappoint; yet the coevolutionary mechanism supports the plausibility of continued rapid technological progress.
Source: The Impact of Science and Technology on Global Economic Growth — IMF F&D Magazine, June 2018, JOEL MOKYR.
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