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Schumpeter : The Circular Flow Economy

Decent Essays

After constructing a closed system, Schumpeter inserts the entrepreneur into it; his or her function is to disrupt the economy and spur it on to new heights. Again, it is important to remember that he is using the circular flow economy as a model of initial equilibrium in order to explain economic development as a result of the innovating force of the entrepreneur. According to Schumpeter, development is the change in economic life that arises from within the economic sphere. In this sense, development is foreign to the circular flow model and the tendency towards equilibrium (Schumpeter 63-64). “It is spontaneous and discontinuous change in the channels of the flow, disturbance of equilibrium, which forever alters and displaces the equilibrium state previously existing” (Schumpeter 63). New channels are a sign of innovation; they are the reason the economy is able to embark on a new path toward a differing equilibrium. The entrepreneur is the figure responsible for creating these new channels by introducing innovations that disturb the status quo. Schumpeter defines innovation “as the carrying out of new combinations of the means of production” (Elster 116; emphasis in original). An individual whose function is to carry out new combinations is called an entrepreneur (75). Schumpeter goes on to explain the five main cases of new combinations—a new good, a new method, a new market, a new supply, a new organization. The power of his explanation lies in its simplicity; he

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