The present dissertation examines the impact of the diffusion of general purpose technologies (GPTs) on economic structure and long-term development. It is motivated by the fact that previous studies of GPTs do not consider the vertical integration of production sufficiently, and mostly revolve...

The Soviet Union was competing head to head with market economies in the generation of new technologies, not only in traditional industries such as steelmaking, electricity, and machineries, but also in high tech-areas such as synthetic materials and microelectronics. Yet its productivity...