Scale economies and demand, combined with the relative prices of input factors, can provide an economic explanation to the location and timing of the Industrial Revolution. Its labor-saving innovations were profitable only above a minimum output threshold, which allowed to cover the upfront cost...

In this work we analyze the relationship between the patterns of firm diversification, if any, across product lines and across bodies of innovative knowledge, proxied by the patent classes where the firm is present. Putting it more emphatically we investigate the relationship between "what a...

This paper examines the determinants of international competitiveness at the level of sectors and firms. First, we address the relation between cost-related and technological competition in a sample of fifteen OECD countries. Results suggest that the countries' sectoral market shares are indeed...

Why was the Industrial Revolution British? In a recent article published in this <sc>Journal</sc>, Robert Allen argues that only in England was the price of labor relative to capital high enough to justify the adoption of the labor-saving technologies which characterized the Industrial Revolution. To...

This paper analyzes the patterns of market selection in manufacturing industries of France, Germany, UK, and USA. We first disentangle the contribution to industry-level productivity growth of within-firm productivity changes and between-firms reallocation of shares. The evidence corroborates...

C<sc>orrocher</sc> N. and C<sc>usmano</sc> L. The 'KIBS engine' of regional innovation systems: empirical evidence from European regions, <italic>Regional Studies</italic>. Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) are key players in innovation systems, particularly in advanced regions where manufacturing competitiveness...

Many eco-innovations have been linked to technical change in the ICT domain. Leveraging the distinctive features of general purpose technologies, ICT have the potential to steer green growth and to help decouple this growth from ecological damage. The paper aims to shed light on innovation...

This paper aims at discussing the entry process and competitive strategies of MVNOs in Italy and France. It illustrates the features of competition in a sector – the mobile telecom service industry – which is characterized by market saturation and demand heterogeneity. In doing so, it looks...

Despite a considerable amount of theoretical and empirical research in industrial organisation literature on the relationship between piracy, music sales and their antecedents, a significant gap exists for what concerns the linkage between digital music piracy and the recent success of online...