This paper discusses the impact of the international transfer of embodied technological change on the employment evolution of skills in a sample of low and middle income countries (LMICs). A large body of literature has already underlined the occurrence of widening wage and employment...

One of the most controversial parts of F. A. Hayek's work is his theory of cultural evolution. By starting with current discussions on biological and cultural selection theories we bring individual, kin and group selection aspects together and shed some light on Hayek's thoughts on the Theory of...

The greatest empirical research project into the shape of the business cycle which has ever been made, was conducted in America at the "National Bureau of Economic Research" between 1920 and the 1950s under the guidance of Wesley Mitchell and Arthur Burns. Thor Hultgren was one of the members of...

One of Keynes' core issues in his liquidity preference theory is how fundamental uncertainty affects the propensity to hold money as a liquid asset. The paper critically assesses various formal representations of fundamental uncertainty and provides an argument for a more boundedly rational...

Incentives and assistance provided by TTOs, university policies, patent legislation and scientific disciplines are certainly part of the explanations for academic entrepreneurship. But they are only one facet of the story. Another facet is related to the scientists' motives, expectations and...

What makes scientists patent and disclose inventions to employers? Using a new dataset on Max Planck scientists, we explore their motivations to patent and/or disclose inventions. We propose that patenting need not be used for monetary benefits. Scientists value reputation as important use...

During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped to bring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics. Noting that behavioral economics seems still under the spell of the rational choice tradition - and, indirectly, of behaviorism - we...

This paper develops theoretical standpoints to investigate and analyse university inventors and patenting activities. Although the studies on academic entrepreneurship and university patenting have substantially increased, first there have not been enough studies on individual inventors and...

The relationship between innovation and firm survival is analyzed for the population of German laser source producers from the beginning of the industry until 2005. Innovation effort is approximated by the generation of high quality patents in laser sources technology (IPC H01S) and by having...

The economic literature started to recognize the heterogeneity characterizing the nature of different technologies, introducing the concept of General Purpose Technologies. In this paper, we offer a "new view of General Purpose Technologies", building on the historical as well as on the recent...