The structure and regulation of consumption and demand has recently become of great interest to sociologists and economists alike, and at the same time there is growing interest in trying to understand the patterns and drivers of technological innovation. This book brings together a range of...

In this paper we study the impact of the income distribution on innovation through the demand for quality goods. For simplicity, we assume that there are two types of consumers, rich and poor. The income distribution is measured by the population share of the poor and the relative income of the...

This paper presents a History Friendly Model which addresses the issue of the bifurcation in technological styles" between US and Britain during the nineteenth century. The model aims at gaining a better understanding of the micro-dynamics that gave rise to different patterns of innovation in...