Over the past 20 years, Italy has realised changes in labour legislation, leading to a decentralisation of wage bargaining and increased flexibility in labour relations. Both these factors have helped to curb wage growth and to enhance employment growth, but have also led to a crisis in Italian...

Geographic patterns of commodity trade and foreign direct investment are not consistent with the proposition that European economies are experiencing a process of increasing 'globalization.' Internationalization is taking place as economic integration within the European Union. During the last...

In a neoclassical framework, one can argue that unemployment can be reduced by means of institutional changes that allow for a better working of the labor market and, notably, by achieving downward wage flexibility. The author argues that, although various policy recommendations about removing...

Joseph A. Schumpeter's hypothesis that radical innovations come about in bunches has caused considerable controversy. The author's reexamination of the empirical evidence suggests that there is indeed poor evidence of macroeconomic innovation waves before the mid-nineteenth century. Thereafter,...

Analyzing changes over time in firm-level R&D efforts, the authors find that demand growth in a firm's sector of principal activity has a positive influence on changes in a firm's R&D effort, confirming J. Schmookler's (1966) 'demand-pull' hypothesis. This finding points to an aspect of...