This study reviews insights and reflectionsoriginating from the recently developed concept of self-organized criticality(SOC), which is based on the idea that complex behavior can developspontaneously in various many-body systems whose dynamics may vary abruptly andunexpectedly. First, some...

We study the behaviour: of the average aggregate growth rate of an economy, driven by only small idiosyncratic total factor productivity shocks and where investment behaviour at the single plant level follows an (S,s) policy. We assume that in the case of investment (disinvestment) there are...

We propose a simple model where large innovation waves arise from the endogenous propagation of information around sectors. Innovators of each sector invest in internal R&D and in local search for information. We show that depending on the structural parameters of the single sectors, some of the...

The paper investigates the mechanics through which novel technological principles are developed and diffused throughout an economy consisting of a technologically heterogeneous ensemble of firms. In the model entrepreneurs invest in the discovery and in the diffusion of a technological principle...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the nexus between demand patterns and innovation as it stems from research efforts and the extent of specialization. In the proposed model an innovation race conducted by entrants investing in research and development against established incumbents raises...

This paper attempts to generalise some results obtained in previous work showing the conditions under which paradigm setters emerge. We distinguish two different but definitely complementary and overlapping ways through which searching and learning occur. The first exploits the spillover...

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolutionary process of imitation and innovation as a process of searching in a given neighbourhood of firms. Networks are the main source of information for firms willing to actively search and upgrade and which define the reachable neighbourhood...

The present paper studies incentive provision in a model where a manager can affect the firm's stock price by exerting unobservable effort and through costly, deceptive signalling and investigates the role product market competition plays in shaping shareholders' trade-off between inducing...