The aim of this paper is to highlight the effect of irreversibility in partner choice in inter-firm collaborations. In an environment where firms are binded by contractual constraints regarding the duration of partnerships, how does the tacitness and complexity influence the overall knowledge in...

The main purpose of our paper is to present a model which allows a comparison of different types of technology policies to be made. It appears that there is a kind of model which is appropriate to that purpose but which belongs to the theory of the firm. Indeed, one of the characteristics of...

The Innovation Act was introduced by the French government in 1999, with the aim of encouraging academic institutions to protect and commercialize their scientists’ inventions. We explore the effects of the Act on the distribution of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) over academic...

Interaction among autonomous decision-makers is usually modelled in economics in game-theoretic terms or within the framework of General Equilibrium. Game-theoretic and General Equilibrium models deal almost exclusively with the existence of equilibria and do not analyse the processes which...

This paper presents an evolutionary microeconomic theory of innovation and production and discusses its implications for development theory. Using the notions of technological paradigm and trajectory, it develops an alternative view of firm behavior and learning. It is shown then how these are...

This paper presents the basic ideas and methodologies of a set of contemporary contributions which are grouped under the general heading of "evolutionary economics." Some achievements--especially with regard to the analysis of technological change and economic dynamics--are illustrated, some...

The paper analyses some general dynamic properties of industries characterized by heterogeneous firms and continuing stochastic entry. After a brief critical assessment of some significant drawbacks of recent contributions to modeling of stochastic industrial dynamics, we propose a novel...