This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the determination of firms’ and industries’ innovative activity and performance, highlighting the questions addressed, the approaches adopted, impediments to progress in the field, and research opportunities. We review the...

This chapter reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on learning by doing. Many of the distinctive theoretical implications of learning by doing have been derived under the assumption that the cost–quantity relationships observed in numerous empirical studies are largely the result of...

We present a selective survey of the economic theory of intellectual property rights. After a brief description of the institutional framework, we discuss policy objectives and some basic welfare tradeoffs in intellectual property design. We consider the extent to which social objectives can be...

This chapter reviews and integrates much of what has been learned on the processes of technological evolution, their main features, and their effects on the evolution of industries. First, we map and integrate the various pieces of evidence concerning the nature and structure of technological...