Demand theory grew out of the revision of utilitarianism. The original, Benthamite program – based on a naturalistic, hedonic interpretation of behavior – was replaced by an abstract, subjectivist approach, a motivational mechanics. The implications – expressed exclusively in observable...

Hayek's approach to cultural and institutional evolution has been frequently criticized because it is explicitly based on the controversial notion of (cultural) group selection. In this paper this criticism is rejected on the basis of recent works on biological and cultural evolution. The...

We use new data on the location and background of entrants into the U.S. tire industry to analyze the factors that caused the industry to be so regionally concentrated around Akron, Ohio, a small city with no particular advantages for tire production. We analyze the states where firms entered...

Previous empirical research has established that science appears to stimulate the widespread diffusion of knowledge. The exact mechanism through which science catalyzes knowledge flow, however, remains somewhat ambiguous. This paper investigates whether the observed knowledge diffusion...

New knowledge with commercial potential is continually created in academic institutions. How is it turned into economically valuable businesses? This paper argues that the transfer is an entrepreneurial process. To understand this, the actions and the constraints characteristic for the...

Schumpeterian 'development from within' requires imagination, skill and motivation; so does Cattaneo's 'psychology of wealth'. Neither can be encompassed by models that rely on deductive rationality, but are twin products of Knightian uncertainty, where the absence of demonstrably correct...

A growing body of work emphasizes the role that the spatial component plays in the innovation process. These perspectives brought the region's infrastructure and its endowment with crucial factors into the focus of research. Given that these factors do significantly influence the innovativeness...