The Effects of Market Failures

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The Effects of Market Failures Innovation has a crucial impact on the standards of living in particular economy. It is generally agreed that research and innovation are the main sources of growth and job creation in market economies. i.e. output is increased through greater acquisition of knowledge. Subsequently, 2 things matter for economic growth: savings and the state of the productive knowledge (i.e. shows how productivity the extra capital will be used). The production function diagram below can illustrate this [IMAGE] [IMAGE] Where labour productivity per worker experiences diminishing marginal returns This diagram shows how economic growth can be realised by accumulation of capital and/or higher levels of knowledge. It should be noted that productivity growth is the difference between the growth of inputs and the growth of outputs and that technological progress is measured as residual-so that any problems with measuring inputs or outputs, will be transferred onto measuring technological progress. There are 2 movements on the diagram: a to b – due to the accumulation of capital and b to c – due to the growth of productivity or technical progress. The difficulty with this is that if knowledge had not changed, the movement from a to b will not have been experienced. The only reason capital has been accumulated is due to the increase in technical progress. Generally speaking technological progress generates new wealth in two ways: either through innovative process which help to increase the productivity of labour and capital and thus enable production levels to increase and/or to save available r... ... middle of paper ... ...ns on the likely private values of their questions, expectations which policy can certainly influence. Given all these difficulties, which arise from the innovation process, it would seem to be wishful thinking to imagine that scientific and technological progress could be adequately funded in all the market economies without some form of government assistance. However one needs to recognise that government intervention can fail as well. Such examples are, imperfect information, the benefit between those who pay and those who benefit, bureaucratic capture and pressure group activity. It does not automatically follow that government policy will be welfare-improving. This is particularly so with respect to innovative activates, the formulation of which entails access to detailed microeconomic and social information

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