It is argued that, differently from a diffuse practice among modern economists, one needs reading more than the first couple of pages of the Wealth of Nations in order to fully appreciate Smith’s contribution to the economics of exchange, innovation and economic evolution. In particular, by...

Following the growing interest towards the role of the knowledge in the modern economies the economic literature has focused a lot of studies into the role of the producers of new knowledge, e.g. universities and public research institutions. The relations between these bodies and the firms, the...

The new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) represent an important challenge for SME. Especially in the context of local productive areas, this topic may be relevant as a new opportunity of competitiveness for the system as a whole. In this working paper, the focus is on the...