The paper, as such a draft of a chapter for the second edition of the Handbook of Economic Socielogy, Edited by Neil J. Smelser and Richard Swedberg), is meant to offer some sort of roadmap accross a few fields of investigation concerning the relationships between technological learning and...

In this work we discuss the impact of the new ICT techno-economic paradigm upon the vertical and horizontal boundaries of the firm and ask whether the change in the sources of competitive advantage has resulted in changes in the size distribution of firms and also in the degree of concentration...

This paper examines the effects of innovation on the survival of manufacturing firms in the Netherlands. The demographics of firms according to their innovative performance and type of innovation are traced by using the Business Register population of all firms active in the Netherlands and the...

High-potential new ventures are a source of economic growth, which policy makers call upon in times of crisis when entrepreneurship is seen as a remedy to economic downturn. Yet at these times new ventures face intensified selection, and survival hinges on heterogeneous capabilities. We examine...

Pharmaceuticals is one of the few industries in which patents are recognized as being key instruments for privately appropriating the economic benefits of innovation. Competition is largely based on innovation, and basic science is becoming increasingly crucial for the discovery and development...

The paper discusses some fundamental features of the 'Simonian' research program in microeconomics and compare them with two streams of thought which find their roots into Simon's pathbreaking work since the '50s and '60s, namely Transaction Cost Economics and Evolutionary Economics. One argues...

Even the most rudimentary training from Economics 101 starts with demand curves going down and supply curves going up. They are so 'natural' that they sound even more obvious than the Euclidian postulates in mathematics. But are they? What do they actually mean? Start with ''demand curves''. Are...

The paper, largely based on the introduction to Dosi (2012), elaborates on the main interpretative ingredients, methodology and challenges ahead of the evolutionary research program in economics. Telegraphically, such a perspective attempts to understand a wide set of economic phenomena -...