This paper contributes to the analysis of the persistence of firm productivity, here measured by the total factor productivity (TFP), and highlights its path dependent characteristics. The study contributes to the literature on persistence in productivity along four main lines. First, it...

The analysis of social interactions as drivers of economic dynamics represents a growing field of the economics of complexity. Social interactions are a specific form of interdependence whereby the changes in the behavior of other agents affect utility functions for households and production...

Public policy plays a key role in supporting R&D activities and a variety of policy tools have been applied to contrast the undersupply of technological knowledge including the provision of subsidies to private firms performing R&D activities. A large literature has identified the sources of...

This paper contributes a novel approach to appreciating the role of external knowledge in the innovative process based upon the notion of knowledge generation function. In so doing this paper impinges upon the rich literature on spillovers and yet introduces a sharp discontinuity that highlights...

Building upon both the Schumpeterian and the Marshallian legacies, this paper elaborates a model of localized technological change cum pecuniary knowledge externalities to provide a systemic explanation for total factor productivity. The generation of technological knowledge consists in the...

The paper explores the causes and effects of persistence in the discretionary allocation of public subsidies to R&D activities performed by private firms in high-tech and low-tech industries. It applies the crucial distinction between past dependent reputation-Matthew-effects and path dependent...

Technological congruence is defined by the matching between the relative size of outputs’ elasticity with the relative abundance and cost of inputs in local factor markets. With given total costs, output is larger the larger is the output elasticity of the cheapest input. Technological...

The paper provides an interpretative framework and structured empirical evidence of the processes leading to the emergence of a light and slow growth economy in advanced countries. The interpret ative framework rests upon the grafting of a) the Schumpeterian hypothesis about the determinants of...