by Roger Koppl

The issue of creativity has arisen in a fun discussion on Schumpeter over at The Austrian Economists. I have often heard people say that we cannot model creativity. I suppose that must be true in some sense, and yet there is much we can say about “creativity” and social institutions. Early in the Wealth of Nations Adam Smith gives us a good account of what creativity is, namely, the “combining together the powers of the most distant and dissimilar objects.” As my old friend Dick Langlois taught me years ago, creativity is recombination. I think we can have an economic theory of recombination. Indeed, the elements are out there. Continue reading →