Introduction: Chris Freeman’s “History, Co-Evolution and Economic Growth”: an affectionate reappraisal

We maintain that Chris Freeman’s approach to the study of the interplay between technical change and economic growth is still a very fertile source of insights. Alas, in much of mainstream research Freeman’s contribution is hardly considered. We show that this is a result of the basic assumptions of neoclassical growth theory (both “old” and “new”) that prevent a pregnant treatment of technical and institutional change. We conclude that if we...