The paper attempts a critical assessment of both the theory and the empirical evidence on the role of appropriability and in particular of Intellectual Property Right (IPR) as incentives for technological innovation. We start with a critical discussion of the standard justification of the...

The paper, as such a draft of a chapter for the second edition of the Handbook of Economic Socielogy, Edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg), is meant to offer some sort of roadmap accross a few fields of investigation concerning the relationships between technological learning and...