How do new industries emerge? This paper aims to answer this question by analyzing the key actors in this process. We focus on the new industry of service robot. By using data of Japanese patent applications, we analyze the role of new firms and of collaborations. We find that the emergence of...

Contemporary economic analysis is largely subject to rather bizarre schizofrenic syndromes. On the one hand, over the last thirty years or so, macro theories have tried to squeeze the interpretation of whatever aggregate dynamics down to some sort of decision-theoretic framework in which the...

This paper aims to provide an alternative framework to previous studies of deflation in Japan. We focus on the real dimension of the price dynamics and propose an imperfect competition model, which describes a rent economy, where the formation of prices can be separated into the markup (level of...

This unique Handbook explores both the economics of the firm and the theory of the firm, two areas which are traditionally treated separately in the literature. On the one hand, the former refers to the structure, organization and boundaries of the firm, while the latter is devoted to the...

In this paper, we focus on the real dimension of the price dynamics in Japan between 1980 and 2000. We use a panel industry dataset to analyze the impact of institutional and structural factors on the heterogeneous price dynamics of 10 manufacturing sectors. Although the evolution of unit labor...

Although heterogeneity in the performance of firms is a well-established stylized fact, we still lack full understanding of its origins and the reasons why it persists. Instead of assuming that performance differences are exogenous, this article focuses on two endogenous strategies--innovation...