Search engines hold the key to helping consumers access the wealth of information on the web. In this paper, I examine the evolution of and competition in the internet search engine market. I find that while early entrants (Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, and Altavista) still have an advantage,...

The steam engine is widely regarded as the icon of the Industrial Revolution and a prime example of a “General Purpose Technology,” and yet its contribution to growth is far from transparent. This paper examines the role that a particular innovative design in steam power, the Corliss engine,...

This paper analyses the relationship between technological progress, the transmission of income inequality across generations and economic growth.

This study explains the evolution of wage inequality over the last 30 years and supports this explanation with evidence. At each level of schooling, a faster rate of technological progress weakens the link between schooling and work and increases the unknown needed to cope with during one's...

Israel constitutes an interesting laboratory case of government intervention in the realm of R&D policy. The recognized scientific and technological prowess of the country was leveraged by extensive government support to commercial R&D projects. The Israeli High Tech sector has grown remarkably...

The Israeli high tech sector is widely regarded as a hotbed of cutting-edge technologies, and as the growth engine of the Israeli economy in the nineties and beyond. In this paper we present a close-up portrait of innovation in Israel for the past 30 years, with the aid of highly detailed patent...

In this paper we exmine the dynamic resolution of technological adoption in "hardware/software" systems. We are interested in determinig to what extent software availability affects hardware sales and/or vice-versa. We fi rst develop a dynamic model for estimating demand when costs (and hence...

This paper describes the database on U.S. patents that we have developed over the past decade, with the goal of making it widely accessible for research. We present main trends in U. S. patenting over the last 30 years, including a variety of original measures constructed with citation data,...

A small literature on General Purpose Technology has emerged in recent years. It has studied a number of channels through which a new technology affects the economy, such as secondary innovations and diffusion. Our goal is to examine new channels of adjustment that operate through labor markets....