Why do some countries grow much faster, and have much better trade performance, than other countries? What are the crucial factors behind such differences, and what can governments do in order to improve the relative position of their economies? This paper outlines a synthetic framework, based...

This paper addresses one of the oldest and most controversial issues in economics: Why do some countries succeed in catching up, while others fall behind? In recent years the quality and availability of data on different aspects of development have improved a lot. Attempting to exploit this...

This paper discusses notions of theory in relation to evolutionary understandings of innovation. It starts by empirically demonstrating the relevance of evolutionary perspectives – broadly defined – for understanding the “basics of what’s going on” in the economic sphere when it comes...

The scholarly literature on innovation was for a long time not very voluminous. But as shown in the paper, this is now rapidly changing. New journals, professional associations and organizational units within universities focusing on innovation have also been formed. This paper explores the...

Specialization in high-tech products is frequently used to capture technology intensity of exports. The literature suggests that developing countries are increasingly becoming exporters of high-tech products, and some may even be among the most deeply specialized countries in the field of...

The analysis addresses path dependency by studying development in industrial structure in Norway over time, and relates types of changes in firms to innovation activities in the firms as identified by the Norwegian innovation survey. A typology of changes is developed on the basis of matched...

This paper addresses the development of the Norwegian Petroleum Innovation System. The characteristics of the Norwegian Petroleum Innovation System were on the one hand the increasing ability to solve bottlenecks connected to production and operation on the Norwegian shelf, and on the other a...

Michael Porter's book "The Competitive Advantage of Nations" (1990) has led to increasing attention on the favourable impact that "advanced domestic users" may have on competitiveness. This paper presents a critical appraisal of the theoretical and empirical evidence on this relationship. An...