Entrepreneurs, creators of new firms, are a rare species. Even in innovation-driven economies, only 1-2% of the work force starts a business in any given year. Yet entrepreneurs, particularly innovative entrepreneurs, are vital to the competitiveness of the economy and may establish new jobs....

The importance of knowledge spillovers for achieving innovation and economic growth is widely recognized. It is not straightforward which type of spillovers is most effective: intra-sectoral spillovers or inter-sectoral spillovers. We investigate this controversy using a model of regional...

Intangible knowledge capital (IKC) - technology produced by workers but not embodied in them - can offset the "middle income trap" as China exhausts the benefits of international technology transfer. IKC is productivity-enhancing among Chinese enterprises - more so in domestically owned than in...

This paper presents a theoretical model and empirical evidence to explain the observation that a country in which the level of technology approaches the technology frontier tends to rely more on technology creation than adoption, and to invest more in basic research than in development. The...

Economic growth in the East Asian economies was remarkable during the latter part of the 20th century, starting with Japan just after World War II, followed by the East Asian Tigers and "tiger cubs" after that and, most recently, the People's Republic of China and India. The high, sustained...

This paper investigates the effect of domestic market size on innovation activities across different durable good industries in the Chinese manufacturing sector. We address the endogeneity of market size by an IV strategy, based on a measure of potential market size, which is driven only by...

Modern economic growth started in the West in the early nineteenth century. This survey discusses the precise connection between the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of growth, and connects it to the intellectual and economic factors underlying the growth of useful knowledge. The...

This chapter surveys the history of modern economic growth and suggests a number of mechanisms that drove the unprecedented technological thrust that account for the discontinuities of economic modernity. The Industrial Revolution and the subsequent developments did not just raise the level of...