Technological change was unskilled-labor-biased during the early Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but is skill-biased today. This fact is not embedded in extant unified growth models. We develop a model of the transition to sustained economic growth...

The paper explores the long run evolution of Italy's performance in technological innovation as a function of international technology transfer, reconstructing the different phases and dimensions of Italian innovative activity, tracking the transfer of foreign technological knowledge through a...

For most of its existence, mankind’s wellbeing was dictated by disease, the elements and other natural factors, and the occasional conflict. Virtually everything it needed — food, fuel, clothing, medicine, transport, mechanical power — was the direct or indirect product of living nature....

We analyze the role of risk-sharing institutions in transitions to modern economies. Transitions requires individual-level risk-taking in pursuing productivity-enhancing activities including using and developing new knowledge. Individual-level, idiosyncratic risk implies that distinct...

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the private value of patents and R&D in European firms during the period 1991-2004. We explore the relationship between firm's stock market value, patents, and "quality"-weighted patents issued by the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent...

This paper analyses the propensity to withdraw European patent applications within a regional sample of Italian applicants. The procedure for obtaining a granted patent from the EPO is composed of a series of sequential and selective steps imposing additional costs to the applicants....

In a generalized quality-ladder growth model, this paper firstly derives the optimal patent breadth and the socially optimal profit-sharing arrangement between patentholders. In this general-equilibrium setting, it identifies and derives a dynamic distortion of markup pricing on capital...

Is the patent length an effective policy instrument in stimulating R&D? This paper develops a generalized variety-expanding growth model and then calibrates the model to the aggregate data of the US economy to analyze the effects of extending the patent length. The numerical exercise suggests...

We show that when the researcher’s (observable but not contractible) contribution <p> to innovation is crucial, a covenant not to compete (CNC) reduces e.ort and profits <p> under both spot and relational contracts. Having no CNC allows the researcher to <p> leave for a rival. This alleviates a...</p></p></p>

This paper tries to find how firms use IPRs in the form of patents to protect innovation capital and find determinants of their effectiveness. The research is based on a large sample of 2960 Polish manufacturing firms that were engaged in developing and/or implementing a product or process...