Localised Technological Change: Towards the Economics of Complexity / Edition 1

by Cristiano Antonelli

Overview

The extent to which firms can react creatively to rather than adjust passively against new techniques and practices is dependent on their command of technological knowledge and relative competence. This book explores the characteristics of the path dependent dynamics of localized technological change, demonstrating how the economics of complexity can inform our understanding of the economics of innovation and vice versa.

The book is structured in three parts: part one focuses on the ingredients of the economics of localized technological change, focusing on the legacies of the key economists and a critical assessment. Part two explores the governance of the generation, dissemination, use and exploitation of localized technological knowledge. Part three elaborates on the basic dynamic mechanisms of localized technological change, combining theory with specific empirical models. The final perspectives articulate the relations between the economics of localized technological change, the economics of path dependence and the challenge of the emerging economics of complexity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415426831
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/31/2008
Series:	Routledge Studies in Global Competition , #38
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Cristiano Antonelli holds the chair of Political Economy of the University of Torino, where he is also the Director of the Department of Economics Cognetti de Martiis and of BRICK (Bureau of Research on Innovation, Complexity and Knowledge) at the Collegio Carlo Alberto. He is the the managing editor of Economics of Innovation and New Technology. His previous book The Economics of Innovation, New Technologies and Structural Change (2003) is also available from Routledge.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Part 1: The Ingredients 2. The Classical Legacy: Smith, Marx and Schumpeter 3. Localized Technological Change: A Critical Assessment Part 2: The Governance of Localized Technological Knowledge 4. Models of Knowledge and Systems of Governance 5. The New Dimensions of Knowledge Indivisibility: Cumulability, Compositeness, Fungeability and Stickiness 6. Knowledge and the Theory of the Firm: The Interdependence Among Transaction, Coordination and Production 7. Technological Knowledge and the Theory of the Firm: Idiosyncratic Path Dependence and the Quest for an Economics of Distinctive Competences 8. To Use or to Sell Technological Knowledge 9. The Governance of Localized Knowledge 10. The Economics of University: A Knowledge Governance Approach 11. Towards Non-Exclusive Property Rights: Knowledge as an Essential Facility Part 3: The Introduction of Localized Technological Change 12. Localized Technological Change: The Benchmark 13. The System Dynamics of Collective Knowledge: From Gradualism and Saltationism to Punctuated Change 14. Localized Technological Change and Factor Markets: Constraints and Inducements to Innovation 15. Localized Product Innovation: The Role of Proximity in the Lancastrian Product Space 16. Diffusion as a Process of Creative Adoption 17. Path Dependence and the Quest for Complex Dynamics 18. Conclusion: Hysteresis and Creativity