This volume contains the papers and discussion of a conference on the dynamics of decentralized, market economies held at the Grand Hotel, Saltsjöbaden near Stockholm, August 29-31, 1983.
The conference was sponsored by the Marcus Wallenberg Foundation for International Cooperation in Science and was organized jointly by the Industrial Institute of Economic and Social Research (IUI) in Stockholm, and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (JEBO).
The year 1983 was the hundredth anniversary of Joseph Schumpeter's birthday. It was a fitting occasion for a major consideration of the dynamics of market economies because, more than any thinker of this century, Schumpeter was concerned with this topic.
As for sponsorship of the Marcus Wallenberg Foundation, it was appropriate for several reasons. First, the group inc1uded many nationalities and the topic is of concern to many, if not all, nations. Second, Schumpeter was himself a world citizen whose career began in Austria-Hungary, and continued in Germany and the United States. Schumpeter's influence extended around the globe and has persisted until now. And, third, Marcus Wallenberg was, if any, the industrialist entrepreneur that Joseph Schumpeter described, who initiated and reorganized large and small companies on a global scale, and who chaired for many years companies with a world-wide employment in the hundreds of thousands, employing a large percent of the entire Swedish manufacturing labor force.
