This paper presents a critical overview of some recent attempts at building formal models of organizations as information-processing and problem-solving entities. We distinguish between two classes of models according to the different objects of analysis. The first class includes models mainly...

In this work we shall attempt an excursus across fundamentally different streams of modern interpretations of the "primitive entities" constituting the social fabrics of economic systems. Behind each specific interpretative story, there is a set of ceteris paribus assumptions and also some...

This work, which shall contribute to the Fest "A Just Society: Honouring Joseph Stiglitz", discusses a major unifying theme in Joe Stiglitz monumental work, namely, the analysis of economies characterised by persistent learning and coordination hurdles. In his analysis Joe is in many respects a...

"Learning-by-doing" is usually identified as a process whereby performance increases with experience in production. The paper investigates different patterns of "learning by doing", studying learning curves at product level. Cost-quantity relationships differ a lot across products belonging to...

Evolutionary theories of economic change identify the processes of idiosyncratic learning by individual firms and of market selection as the two main drivers of the dynamics of industries. Are such processes able to robustly account for the statistical regularities which industrial structures...

In this work, we present an assessment of the nature and impact of current "globalizing" tendencies at various levels of observation. The evidence in this respect suggests that it has mostly concerned financial flows (especially short-term ones); to some extent trade flows; and only to very...

The purpose of this work is to present a sort of short selective guide to an enormous and diverse literature on learning processes in economics. We argue that learning is an ubiquitous characteristic of most economic and social systems but it acquires even greater importance in explicitly...

The aim of this work is to investigate the role played by the so-called `globalization' processes of the last couples of decades on the international patterns of technological learning and on the distribution of incomes and growth. First, we re-assess the evidence on the general patterns of the...