As Innovations Drive Economic Growth, Do They also Raise Well-Being?

While there is little doubt that innovations drive economic growth, their effects on well-being areless clear. One reason for this are ambivalent effects of innovations on well-being that result frompecuniary and technological externalities of innovations, argued to be inevitable. Another majorreason lies in the fact that, as a result of innovations, preferences can change over time. Undersuch conditions, a time-consistent measuring rod for changes in well-being is hard to construct.Existing conceptions of well-being are shown not yet to solve the problem in a way that providesan unambiguous answer to the question in the title.