This paper shows that there are sound economic arguments for developing a modern industrial policy at the EU level. The rationale lies in the need to both facilitate economic restructuring through strategic behaviour whenever market forces fail to do so themselves, and to encourage innovation...

The Italian industrial district model is changing, notably in two fundamental aspects. On the one hand, the growing appropriability of innovation calls into question the innovation-imitation mechanism typical of the district-based competitive dynamic, introducing idiosyncratic factors the fruits...

Between 1950 and 2000, the four-firm producer-concentration ratio for beer increased from 22 to 95 in the United States; and Anheuser-Busch's share of domestic output ballooned from 6 to 54 percent. In the same period, the four-firm producer-concentration ratio in Germany has risen, but it...

Why do new technology-based firms (NTBFs) cooperate? Starting from the literature on alliance formation in the resource and competence-based tradition, we derive an empirical model that aims at highlighting the drivers of the formation of alliances by NTBFs. In particular, we focus on the...

In 2003, Japan Airlines and Japan Air System merged to become an equal rival to All Nippon Airways, which had significant market power in the domestic air transportation market in Japan. This paper examines the merger effects on the competition structure of the air transportation market using...

Since the late 90s,, European industries of electricity and gas have been subject to a process of concentration at both horizontal and vertical levels. At first glance, this consolidation is quite natural since, on the one hand, the application of European directives to open to competition has...

We analyze bank competition in Russia at different levels of aggregation. First, we compute a country-level measure of competition and compare it to that for similar-sized economies. Second, we contrast competition across different groups of banks in Russia. Third, we analyze bank competition...

A theoretical model based on the cluster theory was developed and used to simulate the dynamics of complex systems, composed of a number of interacting agents-clusters, with different sizes M. The case of systems formed by a constant total number of agents in metastable (partial) equilibrium was...

An important issue facing policymakers is the degree to which fluctuations in economic activity affect employment in large and small businesses across sectors and regions. This issue is particularly relevant for developing countries as it matters for the understanding of the labour market...

We define international technological specialisation (ITS) as the technological performance of a country in a specific technology relative to its overall international technological performance. This paper uses patent applications and patent citations at the European Patent Office for five...