Technological dualism often is found to be associated with the geographical clustering of firms that use the same techniques. To shed further light on these localization phenomena, we analyze the long-run dynamic behavior of a system in which firms' choices among alternative production methods...

Empirical analyses of research and development find strong evidence that these activities tend to cluster geographically. Clusters are thought to emerge from the presence of localized positive externalities. This paper presents a model of this clustering behaviour. We find that phase changes in...

Schumpeterian creative destruction occurs not only at the industry level, but also with each firm trying to maintain or improve its position in the technology race. Based on a rich data set on more than 4,000 German business units, this paper shows that the simultaneous occurrence of hiring and...

A technology index based on R&D, skilled labour and capital vintage was developed and used to characterise industrial firms by technology level, facilitating the analysis of relationships between technology and economic performance at the firm level. The results show that technology-intensive...

By itself, an exchange of knowledge between complementary activities is inadequate to bring the localised technological specialisation of firms closer together, but cooperative 1earning tends to like the technological profile of partner companies more closely cornplementary Interwar cartels in...

A firm's local environment can constitute a source of national or regional cornpetitive advantage. An important question, therefore, is how these environments come about and how they can be lost. In this paper, we argue that a local environment is a function of the process of technological...

This paper studies the links between productivity, innovation and research at the firm level. We introduce three new features: (i) A structural model that explains productivity by innovation output, and innovation output by research investment: (ii) New data on French manufacturing firms,...

Two major themes that have emerged from recent theoretical and empirical studies of technology at the firm level have been the tendencies on the one hand to localization of technological search and on the other hand to the spread of multi-technology companies, required to incorporate an...

The purpose of the study is to characterize different styles of work organization in French firms and their current changes and to link them to the use of specific technologies and to firms performance. The data which are used arc of two kinds: a labor force survey (1 470 blue collar) and a...

Numerous attempts have been made to account for cross-industries differences in technological efforts; most of them have been accomplished along the lines of the structure-conduct-performance hypothesis. It is our purpose to reverse such an approach in the light of the latest theoretical and...