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Carlota Perez

Researcher, lecturer and international consultant, specialized in the social and economic impact of technical change and in the historically changing conditions for growth, development and competitiveness.

...the book fills an important gap in the literature on business cycles and innovations. I most strongly commend it to all those attempting to understand the past and future evolution of technology and the economy.'

Christopher Freeman, Emeritus Professor, SPRU,
University of Sussex, UK

'...Carlota Perez shows us that historically technological revolutions arrive with remarkable regularity, and that economies react to them in predictable phases. Her argument provides much needed perspective not just on history, but on our own times. And especially on our own information revolution.'

W. Brian Arthur, Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico

Carlota Perez. Venezuelan-British. Researcher, lecturer and international consultant, specialized in the social and economic impact of technical change.

She is Centennial Professor of International Development at the London School of Economics, U.K.; Professor of Technology and Development, Technological University of Tallinn, Estonia; Research Affiliate, Cambridge Finance, Cambridge University, U.K., and Honorary Professor at SPRU, Science and Technology Policy Research, School of Business, Management and Economics, University of Sussex, U.K.

Her articles from the early 1980s and her book Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages [Elgar 2002] have contributed to the understanding of the relations between technical and institutional change, between finance and technological diffusion and between technology and economic development.

'... a road map of relevance both for scholars and investors who, having survived the Great Bubble of 1999-2000, must needs concern themselves with what happens next'

William Janeway, Vice Chairman of Warburg Pincus, USA

'The financial captains - in Tom Wolfe's memorable phrase, "the Masters of the Universe" - would be well-served by this dose of history. So, too, would the leaders of productive capital, as they struggle to add value in a f renzy of financial speculation. And as for policy-makers, the answer is obvious - Perez's insights are not just important; they are urgent... 'Do read the book. It is important. It is accessible. It is well presented. Its also fun.'

Raphie Kaplinsky, IDS, University of Sussex and CENTRIM, University of Brighton, UK
From Review in Technovationn

PUBLICATIONS

ON THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
WP: Financial bubbles, crises and the role of government in unleashing golden ages
This article holds that the recent financial collapse belongs to a family of major boom and bust episodes associated with the way in which successive technological revolutions .... read more

ALSO ON THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK:
"Finance and technical change:A long-term view"
The paper presents an alternative model of the emergence and propagation of technological revolutions... read more

ON DEVELOPMENT:
"Technological dynamism and social inclusion in Latin America: a resource-based production development strategy"
This paper sets out a strategy for invigorating development in Latin America by taking advantage of specific opportunities in the current context and the advantages offered by the region. It briefly analyses the characteristics of globalization and the techno-economic paradigm of the information and communications technology revolution... .... read more

ON ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE:
"Technological revolutions,paradigm shifts and socio-institutional change"
The last decades of the 20th Century were a time of uncertainty and extremely uneven development. People in many countries and in most walks of life feel uncertain about the future for themselves and their workplaces, about the prospects for their own countries and for the world as a whole... read more

ON THE BOARD

Why IT and the green economy are the real answer to the financial crisis
by Carlota Perez
Published by: Green Alliance blog, March 19, 2012

'The whole discussion about how to overcome the financial crisis and its consequences on the economy is wrongly focused. Getting public finances in order and the financial world back on its feet will not bring the world economy back to business as usual. Healthy finance with a languid real economy will naturally find new ways of casino behaviour.'

'What is needed is a set of policies that will decidedly tilt the playing field in such a way that finance would find it more profitable to fund production than to gamble in derivatives or futures, while production, in turn, would find clear pathways to profitable innovation and expansion. We are facing a recurring twice-in-a-century event, equivalent to the 1930s after the crash of 1929, which needs to be understood to find effective solutions.'

This article first appeared in Green Alliance's magazine Inside Track.

You may also like to read:

The New Technological Revolution
by Carlota Perez
Presentation at the Technology Frontiers Forum of The Economist, March 5, 2013

"...History can teach us a lot. Innovation has indeed always been the driver of growth and the main source of increasing productivity and wealth. But every technological revolution has brought two types of prosperity. The first type is turbulent and exciting like the bubbles of the 1990s and 2000s and like the Roaring twenties, the railway mania and the canal mania before. They all ended in a bubble collapse. Yet, after the recession, there came the second type: the Victorian boom, the Belle Époque, the Post War Golden Age and… the one that we could have ahead now. Bubble prosperities polarise incomes; Golden Ages tend to reverse the process.

The first prosperity of each revolution is a huge experiment for testing and choosing the new technologies and for installing the infrastructures (be they railways or electricity or internet). It is an intense process of creative destruction, of learning the new and unlearning the old, of getting rid of the dinosaurs. Innovation concentrates on the new industries (as we saw with the information revolution) and on modernizing all the other industries with the new paradigm. This time, it also concentrated on globalization.

The result is that the range of possible technological avenues is now immense. The power of information technology can enable almost any industry to make its own revolution: the world of medicine, the world of materials or that of biology, the creative industries, transport, energy, buildings, nanotechnology, stem cells, agriculture, 3D printing, robotics... Which is the next big thing? Nobody knows. There are no sure successes. They are all uncertain. But they are indeed powerful paths for innovation and wealth creation..."

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