How to get more innovation and more equality. Is economic inequality the price we pay for innovation? The amazing technological advances of the last two decades—in such areas as artificial intelligence, genetics, and materials—have benefited society collectively and rewarded innovators handsomely: we get cool smartphones and technology moguls become billionaires. This contributes to a growing wealth gap; in the United States; the wealth controlled by the top 0.1 percent of households equals that of the bottom ninety percent. Is this the inevitable cost of an innovation-driven economy? Economist Joshua Gans and policy maker Andrew Leigh make the case that pursuing innovation does not mean giving up on equality—precisely the opposite. In this book, they outline ways that society can become both more entrepreneurial and more egalitarian. All innovation entails uncertainty; there's no way to predict which new technologies will catch on. Therefore, Gans and Leigh argue, rather than betting on the future of particular professions, we should consider policies that embrace uncertainty and protect people from unfavorable outcomes. To this end, they suggest policies that promote both innovation and equality. If we encourage innovation in the right way, our future can look more like the cheerful techno-utopia of Star Trek than the dark techno-dystopia of The Terminator.

Offers a theoretical analysis of the important mechanisms by which technical progress and innovation affect the distribution of income. This book shows how the structure of demand changes as the economy becomes wealthier, in ways that may potentially harm the poorest segments of the workforce and economy.

This book hopes to stimulate discussion about how entrepreneurship and innovation contribute to growing inequalities in territories. This will help bridge the gap between research and practice on the role of territory dynamics and regional development. The book begins by examining the growing inequality in regions, which has resulted in lagging economic development. The need to shift current economic policy towards spatial inequality through harnessing the innovative capabilities of regions is examined. The book puts forth a case for reversing the inequality that is evident in lagging regions as a way to reinvigorate territories. The book should appeal to researchers, policy makers, business leaders and the general public interested in territorial dynamics and development.

Susan Cozzens, Dhanaraj Thakur, and the other co-authors ask how the benefits and costs of emerging technologies are distributed amongst different countries _ some rich and some poor. Examining the case studies of five technologies across eight countri

Economic inequality continues to contribute to political and social instability around the world. This instability stifles development and results in widening the wealth gap between the "haves" and "have nots," further eroding stability. It has been argued that entrepreneurship is a prime contributor to this vicious cycle. Using Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation to Mitigate Wealth Inequality contends that this is only true when the opportunity for entrepreneurship is limited to a few. The authors maintain that when entrepreneurship is open to anyone who is properly motivated, innovative, and has a goal of growth for their enterprise, it helps build wealth for a greater number of people. The concept of "social entrepreneurship" is introduced, where entrepreneurship becomes a vehicle for explicitly addressing community-based economic and social challenges using markets. The book uses examples of entrepreneurial projects and programs that have attempted to address inequality to discuss entrepreneurship as an economic development strategy and its role in addressing the challenges of economic inequality. It advocates thinking and acting systemically, creating and sustaining entrepreneurial support ecosystems, in order to generate the synergy required to scale-up development and transform our economies and provides a distinctive perspective on a pressing social and economic issue, with significant implications for the future of the United States and the world.

This series of books brings together results of an extensive research programme on aspects of the national systems of innovation (NSI) in the five BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. It provides a comprehensive and comparative examination of the challenges and opportunities faced by these dynamic and emerging economies. In discussing the impact of innovation with respect to economic, geopolitical, socio-cultural, institutional, and technological systems, it reveals the possibilities of new development paradigms for equitable and sustainable growth. This volume analyses the co-evolution of inequality and NSI across the BRICS economies. It reveals the multi-dimensional character of inequality, in going beyond its income aspect to include assets, access to basic services, infrastructure, knowledge, race, gender, ethnicity and geographic location. In advancing valuable policy recommendations, the book argues that inequalities must be factored in development strategies given that benefits of innovation are not automatically distributed equally. Original and detailed data, together with expert analyses on wide-ranging issues, make this book an invaluable resource for researchers and scholars in economics, development studies and political science, in addition to policy-makers and development practitioners interested in the BRICS countries.

Karl Marx predicted a world in which technical innovation would increasingly devalue and impoverish workers, but other economists thought the opposite, that it would lead to increased wages and living standards--and the economists were right. Yet in the last three decades, the market economy has been jeopardized by a worrying phenomenon: a rise in wage inequality that has left a substantial portion of the workforce worse off despite the continuing productivity growth enjoyed by the economy. Innovation and Inequality examines why. Studies have firmly established a link between this worrying trend and technical change, in particular the rise of new information technologies. In Innovation and Inequality, Gilles Saint-Paul provides a synthetic theoretical analysis of the most important mechanisms by which technical progress and innovation affect the distribution of income. He discusses the conditions under which skill-biased technical change may reduce the wages of the least skilled, and how improvements in information technology allow "superstars" to increase the scale of their activity at the expense of less talented workers. He shows how the structure of demand changes as the economy becomes wealthier, in ways that may potentially harm the poorest segments of the workforce and economy. An essential text for graduate students and an indispensable resource for researchers, Innovation and Inequality reveals how different categories of workers gain or lose from innovation, and how that gain or loss crucially depends on the nature of the innovation.