This chapter discusses the potential of the agent-based computational economics approach for the analysis of processes of innovation and technological change. It is argued that, on the one hand, several genuine properties of innovation processes make the possibilities offered by agent-based...

In very different fields of economics, economic inference and policy evaluation require economists to parametrize a production function that links measures of input factors to measures of output. While doing so, strong assumptions are implicitly made about microeconomic variables governing the...

Improving productivity among microenterprises is important, especially in low-income countries where market imperfections are pervasive, and resources are scarce. Relaxing credit constraints can increase the productivity of microenterprises. Using a field experiment involving agricultural...

The development process and technological improvements since the industrial revolution are characterized by substantial increases in the quantity and variety of tools/machines/materials adopted in production. It is difficult to reject empirically that proliferation of tools variety is the...

Why is it that adopting new technologies takes so long and costs so much? Clearly, firms do not know all the details necessary to implement a complex technology efficiently; learning these details requires extensive search. However, this explanation has a problem: even limited search may be so...

The current paper reviews the impacts and effects of technical transfer and change on the economic patterns of developing countries. It has been postulated that production factors, labor and capital have the greatest effects on economic and development patterns. However, technical change emerges...

Innovative workplace practices based on multi-tasking and ICT that have been diffusing in most OECD countries since the 1990s have strong consequences on working conditions. Available data show together with the emergence of new organizational forms like multi-tasking, the increase in the...

This paper analyzes the consequences of radical patent-regime change by exploiting a natural experiment: the forced adoption of the Prussian patent system in territories annexed after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Compared to other German states, Prussia granted patents more restrictively by...

This paper estimates the association between innovation and employment growth among manufacturing firms in Africa. The paper uses a cross-sectional World Bank Enterprise Survey dataset in which innovation is categorised as product innovation and process innovation. Results from the pooled...