The expression "creative destruction" was coined by Joseph Schumpeter to describe the process whereby new innovations displace old technologies. Schumpeter himself would acknowledge a filiation with Karl Marx, and more precisely with the third volume of Das Kapital. In this book Marx already introduced the notion of obsolescence, along with the idea that firms needed to innovate in order to overcome the "tendency of the profit rate to fall. Yet, Schumpeter (1942) made a big step forward by spelling out the concept of creative destruction and by positing creative destruction as the main driver of economic growth.

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1 July 2026

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American Economic Review 116(7) , pp.2324?2356, 2026

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DOI: 10.1257/aer.116.7.2324

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.116.7.2324

This Journal article is published under the centre's Growth programme.