The aim of this paper is to reassess the current view of current technological trends adopting an historical perspective on previous industrial revolution. In our interpretation, the historical record provides some suggestive evidence for a more sceptical view of the notion of an emerging “fourth” industrial revolution. Indeed, even at an impressionistic glance, the recent […]
This report aims to investigate the possibility that policies for encouraging industrial exploitation of basic research may hamper basic research itself. We focus on the case of top scientists as they are very active in producing academic knowledge and commercialising their research output. The report contains three main parts. First, we analyse the time evolution […]
This paper provides a reappraisal of the ongoing ICT revolution in historical perspective. Our starting point is the literature on “long waves” and “general purpose technologies” which is still widely used to characterize the long run trends of technological change and economic development since the first industrial revolution. Notwithstanding providing some useful insights, it is […]
Along the development path, countries experience large transformations in their economic structure as productive resources move towards different economic activities. “Modern economic growth” is also associated with a self-sustained process of technical change which leads to the emergence of new products and sectors characterized by different scopes for productivity gains and demand growth. In this […]
