This paper introduces endogenous and directed technical change in a growth model with environmental constraints. A unique final good is produced by combining inputs from two sectors. One of these sectors uses 'dirty' machines and thus creates environmental degradation. Research can be directed...

We find that institutional ownership in publicly traded companies is associated with more innovation (measured by cite-weighted patents). To explore the mechanism through which this link arises, we build a model that nests the lazy-manager hypothesis with career-concerns, where institutional...

The availability of technology plays a major role in the feasibility and costs of climate policy. Nonetheless, technological change is highly uncertain and capital intensive, requiring risky efforts in research and development of clean energy technologies. In this paper, we introduce a two-track...

The study of innovation and technological change is an increasing field of economic enquire because innovation can be considered a major engine of growth. This paper is concerned with the determinants of innovation and technological change. Different theoretical approaches present in the...

We use a panel of European firms to investigate the relationship between intangible assets and productivity. We disentangle between tfp and technology adoption, while available studies so far have considered only a notion of productivity conflating the two effects. To this aim, we estimate...

Over the last two decades privatization programs in different countries radically reduced the role of the State as a key player in the economic arena. We use agency theory to discuss the theoretical relationship between changes in the firm's principal-agent structure following privatization, and...

This paper aims at analysing the role of the environment in innovative strategies based on firm economic performance indicators such as employment, turnover, and labour productivity growth. We exploit a unique dataset of 773 Italian service firms with 20 or more employees comprising 1993-1995...

We study a quality-ladder model of endogenous growth that produces stochastic leadership cycles. Over a cycle, industry leaders can innovate several successive times in the same industry, gradually increasing the magnitude of their technological lead before being replaced by a new entrant....

This paper analyses the effect of skilled migration on two measures of innovation, patenting and citations of scientific publications, in a panel of 20 European countries. Skilled migrants positively contribute to the knowledge formation in host countries as they add to the pool of skills in...