An obstacle to the widespread adoption of environmentally friendly energy technologies such as stationary and mobile fuel cells is their high upfront costs. While much lower prices seem to be attainable in the future due to learning curve cost reductions that increase rapidly with the scale of...

The product lifecycle model can be understood as a three-stage model of technological development associated with a particular product technology. In the explorative stage many different designs are developed, in the development stage products become standardized into a dominant design, and in...

In this paper, we test the Rodrik et al (2004) framework to explain differences in development levels across countries by using a broader set of definitions for institutions, geography and economic variables. We use a multi-faceted database to measure institutions in an attempt to go beyond the...

This report provides an overview of current research on and knowledge about employment trends and policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Access to productive employment is seen as essential for poverty reduction and the inclusion of the poor in wider society. Productive employment is characterised by...

We estimate the diffusion of micro cogeneration systems (MiCoGen) using hydrogen produced from natural gas in the Netherlands for the 2000-2050 period on the basis of economical factors. The diffusion is important for the transition to a hydrogen economy based on renewables, with natural gas...

We review the literature on national innovation systems. We first focus on the emergence of the concept of innovation systems, reviewing its historical origins and three main flavours (associated to three "founding fathers" of the concept). After this, we discuss how the notion of innovation...

Is innovation important for development? And if so, how? One popular perception of innovation, that one meets in media every day, is that has to do with developing brand new, advanced solutions for sophisticated, well-off customers, through exploitation of the most recent advances in knowledge....

The empirical literature on economic growth agrees that institutions and governance are important determinants of long-run economic growth rates. As a stylized fact, this literature points to a strong correlation between the level of GDP per capita and the general development level of...

We investigate technological change with regard to CO2 emissions by passenger cars, using a Free Disposal Hull methodology to estimate technological frontiers. We have a sample of cars available in the UK market in the period 2000 – 2007. Our results show that the rates of technological change...

We propose a method for spatial principal components analysis that has two important advantages over the method that Wartenberg (1985) proposed. The first advantage is that, contrary to Wartenberg's method, our method has a clear and exact interpretation: it produces a summary measure...