Linked markets : innovation, the dynamics of industries and general purpose technologies

This Doctoral Dissertation posits that markets, industries, and technologies displaying linked payoffs and connections upstream and downstream are subject to peculiar dynamics for what concerns economic and innovative activities compared to markets, industries and technologies considered in isolation. The main focus of the Dissertation is on a particular case of linked markets, the one affected by the presence of General Purpose Technologies (GPT). GPTs are technologies characterized by pervasiveness, continuous improvement, and inducement of innovational complementarities in linked industries. Those producing GPTs can be considered as upstream markets connected with a wide set of downstream applications; the linkage between GPTs and application sectors affects the incentives for technological innovation and diffusion as well as economic performance. Chapters Two, Three and Four of the Dissertation study the dynamics of industries and innovation in presence of GPTs. Chapters Five and Six of the Dissertation extend the analysis of linked markets beyond GPTs to topics such as market selection and policy intervention. For example, the violations of the replicator dynamics – that is, regressive developments of market selection – determined by the existence of value chain relations are identified and used to construct a more general theory of competition for the market. On the same vein, the constellation of public policy measures that limits or contrasts crowding-out in the context of commercialization of academic knowledge is highlighted and subject to experimental test. By studying the dynamics of linked markets and technologies when GPTs are involved, in value chains, and when policy can ease the commercialization of knowledge from the academic to the market domain, the dissertation opens room to develop a more complex and networked view of economic dynamics.