This paper contributes to the debate on the inducement of environmental innovations by analysing the extent to which endogenous inducement mechanisms spur the generation of greener technologies in contexts characterized by weak exogenous inducement pressures. In the presence of a fragile...

The article investigates the effects of the agglomeration of technological activities on the growth in regional productivity, applying the notion of pecuniary knowledge externalities. Pecuniary knowledge externalities enable one to appreciate both the gains and losses associated with the...

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an extended overview on the debate on the European firm, by articulating it against the backdrop of more traditional theories of the firm. The chapter also proposes a different interpretation of the issue by grafting the discussion into the...

The paper analyzes the effects of the properties of firms' knowledge base on the survival likelihood of firms. Drawing upon the analysis of the patterns of co-occurrence of technological classes in patent applications, we derive the coherence, variety and cognitive distance indexes, accounting...

This paper investigates the relationship between the creation of new firms and the properties of the local knowledge bases, like coherence, cognitive distance and variety. By combining the literature on the knowledge spillovers of entrepreneurship and that on the recombinant knowledge approach,...

The paper investigates the patterns of persistence of innovation and of the properties of firms' knowledge base (KB) across a sample of Italian firms in the period 1998-2006. The analysis draws upon a theoretical representation of knowledge as a collective good, stemming from the recombination...

This paper develops a Schumpeterian approach to structural change, by grafting the role of business cycles and creative destruction into the growth retardation theory. The context of the empirical analysis is represented by the growth path of 20 Italian regions over the period 1981-2003, in the...

This paper investigates the diffusion of regional innovation capabilities within the manufacturing sector. The competence-based theory of the region allows for combining the Schumpeterian view upon innovation and business cycles and the growth poles theory. Innovation capabilities spread within...

Technological change is far from neutral. The empirical analysis of the rate and direction of technological change in a significant sample of 12 major OECD countries in the years 1970-2003 confirms the strong bias of new technologies. The paper implements a novel methodology to identify and...

This book provides an elaboration upon the concept of knowledge from an economic viewpoint. However this is not a book on economics of knowledge, at least not in the conventional sense. Most of the existing books on the matter have focused on the treatment of knowledge in terms of properties of...