This paper examines changes in the organization of the Spanish cotton industry from 1720 to 1860 in its core region of Catalonia. As the Spanish cotton industry adopted the most modern technology and experienced the transition to the factory system, cotton spinning and weaving mills became...

In a world where poor countries provide weak protection for intellectual property rights, market integration shifts technical change in favor of rich nations. Through this channel, free trade may amplify international income differences. At the same time, integration with countries where...

Why did the stock market decline so much in the early 1970s and remain low until the early 1980s? We argue that it was because information technology arrived on the scene and the stock-market incumbents of the day were not ready to implement it. Instead, new firms would bring in the new...

Severe economic fluctuations which had recently hit the entire world economy after relatively prosperous decades despite numerous institutional efforts to control them have recalled an interest to the theory of economic cycles. Historical data on main economic indexes and academic evidence show...

Whereas the linkage between technology and climate policy has been extensively analysed, the interaction between climate policies and human capital formation has received considerably less attention. Human capital is a determinant of economic growth and, at the same time, it affects the...

Since the beginning, human civilization was structured around the concept of work. Currently, however, human labor is systematically removed from the economic processes. By the end of the 21st century it is very likely that human work should be gradually replaced by automated work in most...

This article aims to approach the topic of the electronic commerce considering the context of the durable development, without exclusively limiting to the economic dimension of sustainable development. This paper aims to offer a vision on the e-commerce based on an optimistic approach of the...

The paper studies the patent productivity of scientists over their life cycle. The incentives for patenting and for publishing are compared and how they shape life cycle productivity. In most empirical studies, publication productivity decreases at the end of the scientific career. In contrast,...