Science, technology, and economic theories of growth from the 1950s to today.

Summary The objective of this thesis is to study the way economists have theorized the relationship between science, technology and economic growth from the 1950s to the present. We identify two approaches to the links between science, technology and growth: a "neoclassical" approach and an "evolutionary" approach. The "neoclassical" approach considers scientific and technological progress as exogenous to economic processes and analyzes growth processes as being subject to constant returns. The "evolutionary" approach, on the other hand, defends an interactionist representation of the links between science and technology, considers technological and scientific progress to be endogenous to economic processes and analyzes growth processes as being subject to increasing returns. We analyze the emergence of these two approaches in the 1950s and 1960s and explain their opposition, with the "neoclassical" approach dominating until the 1980s (Part 1). We then show that the "evolutionary" approach became dominant from the 1980s onwards (Part 2).