The paper examines the conditions under which technological successions can occur in the presence of network externalities. A two-stage, multi-agent simulation model is presented in which product designs co-evolve with consumer preferences. It provides a rich framework in which to study the...

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The large increase in computer use has raised the question whether people have to betaught computer skills before entering the labour market. Using data from the 1997 SkillsSurvey of the Employed British Workforce, we argue that neither the increase in computer use nor the fact that particularly...

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The labour market position of low skilled workers has deteriorated dramatically over the 80s and early 90s. Awell-known manifestation of this deterioration is the rise in relative high-skilled wages observed in the UnitedStates. It is a well-documented fact that demand shifts underlie this...

Radical legal innovations in intellectual property protection have been introduced by the little noticed European Database Directive of March 1996. This initiative, part of the larger institutional transformations initiated in response to the economic ramifications of rapid progress in digital...

The research area of the economics of innovation and technological change (EITC) has flourished over the past decades. While it was a relatively marginal field of economics in the 1950s and 1960s, the field has now grown to become a major part of economic analysis. Because many of the early...

The Application Service Provider (ASP) market leads to rapidly increasing numbers of sites that offer software as an online service, rather than for download and installation. This creates a demand for intelligent solutions to retrieve the best service to resolve the user''s problem. This paper...

Agent communication languages such as ACL and KQML provide a standard for agent communication. These languages enable an agent to specify the intention and the content of a message as well as the protocol, the language, and the ontology that are used. For the protocol and the language some...

Globalisation, alliance capitalism and R&D intensive value adding activities are hallmarks of economic activity in advanced industrial countries. National governments have responded to these changes by pursuing policies promoting “techno-nationalism” which includes fostering R&D investment...