The article compares alternative approaches to the theory of the firm. The two main approaches confronted are the contractual (Coasian) perspective and the competence (evolutionary) perspective. Whereas, the firma as a repository of tacit knowledge is neglected in the contractual perspectives,...

This paper continues the discussion of artificial worlds (AWs) begun in Lane (1993b). Here, the focus is on two kinds of AWs. The first, classifier systems, can be used to represent agents that are capable of generating complex behaviors in response to intermittent rewards from an "environment"...

In a model where initially the North specialises in manufactures and the South in primary products, international investment leads to a rising Northern growth rate. If this rate comes to exceed that of Northern labour growth, a full-employment barrier is reached, pushing up Northern wages. This...

A joint production model representing "Spaceship Earth" is used to explore at a conceptual level, implications of natural resource depletion and economic waste production for economy-environment change. Ecological change is considered as uncontrolled technological innovation, partially induced...

The paper is motivated by Joseph A. Schumpeter's "The Crisis of the Tax State." It inquires whether the buildup of government debt in peacetime-prosperity is a threat to the stability, existence of creation of viable "tax states." The paper begins by setting out Schumpeter's conception of the...

We propose a model of the international technology gap that focuses on two sources of self-reinforcing mechanisms in the industrial competition: (i) a positive feedback that runs from innovations to profits to R&D expenditures, and (ii) learning effects in R&D and in production. We find that, if...