Government funding of innovation can have a significant impact not only on the rate of technical change, but also on its direction. In this paper, we examine the role that government grants and government departments played in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an emergent general...

This paper aims to contribute to frame the IP for development debate into a more extensive discussion on appropriability, within the perspective of policies shaping scientific, technological and production capabilities in the light of development theory. Through the lenses of the paradigm based...

The diffusion of innovations is supposed to dissipate inventors' rents. Yet in many documented cases, inventors freely shared knowledge with their competitors. Using a model and case studies, this paper explores why sharing did not eliminate inventors' incentives. Each new technology coexisted...

This article shows - on both conceptual and empirical grounds - the importance of business cycles in affecting key relationships between innovation and international performance. While periods of upswing are characterised by a well documented 'virtuous circle'. between innovation inputs, new...

Understanding whether technical change is beneficial or detrimental for employment is at the center of the policy debate, especially in phases of economic recession. So far, the effects of innovation - in its manifold declinations and intrinsic complexity - on labour demand have proven to be not...

Innovation is one of the usual suspects in defining differences in performance among firms, according to a strong and diverse theoretical framework. Understanding the diversity that exists within the population of innovative firms is essential to elaborate appropriate innovation policies. Our...

The Internet technology has radically transformed the computer and communication world, with revolutionary effects on economic and social systems at a global level. Its invention is the result of a collective research effort performed by computer scientists and telecommunications, electrical,...

The distinction between macro- and microinventions is at the core of recent debates on the Industrial Revolution. Yet, the empirical testing of this notion has remained elusive. We address this issue by introducing a new quality indicator for all patents granted in England in the period...

This paper addresses, both theoretically and empirically, the sectoral patterns of job creation and job destruction in order to distinguish the alternative effects of embodied vs disembodied technological change operating into a vertically connected economy. Disembodied technological change...