Fritz Machlup (1902–83), the Austrian-American economist, is recognized as one of the first scholars to examine knowledge as an economic resource and, for more than half a century, many other economists and management theorists have also argued that economic growth is—or soon will be—dependent on the effective acquisition, transmission, and application of information and ideas.

As serious scholarly work on and around ‘the knowledge economy’ continues to flourish, this new four-volume collection from Routledge’s Critical Concepts in Economics series meets the need for an authoritative, up-to-date, and comprehensive reference work to make better sense of a voluminous—and somewhat amorphous—body of literature. The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge-Driven Economy provides a ‘one-stop’ collection of classic and contemporary contributions to facilitate ready access to the most influential and important scholarship from a wide range of theoretical and practical perspectives. As well as gathering the best work of economists, the collection also incorporates insights from disciplines including Management Science, Law, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Political Science.

The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge-Driven Economy is compiled by Cristiano Antonelli (editor of Routledge’s earlier collection on The Economics of Innovation (2008) (978-0-415-42677-0)) and Paul A. David, leading scholars in the field. The Economics of Knowledge and the Knowledge-Driven Economy is fully indexed and has a newly written introduction which places the gathered material in its intellectual context. It is an essential work of reference and is destined to be valued by scholars and students as a vital one-stop research resource.