towards a characterization of assets and knowledge created in technological agreements some evidence from the automobile robotics sector this paper is an initial attempt to shed new light on the nature and dynamics of technological agreements based on some cognitive dimensions the main purpose of such agreements is to create new competencies and therefore we argue that the nature and characteristics of the knowledge bases that are at the origin of this type of learning process play an essential role in defining the directions and the outcome of learning in particular we examine some case studies of agreements between automobile and robotics firms which show a clear link between the degree of generality of the knowledge produced in the agreement and the capacity to explore new learning paths this explorative capacity also appears to he linked to the ability to generate meta rules of behaviour copyright 2000 by oxford university press

how to improve the performance of carbon tax in china abstract the chinese government committed to controlling carbon dioxide co 2 emissions and promoting development of non fossil fuels thus it becomes a top priority for the government to develop effective climate policies against such background this paper develops a new multi country computable general equilibrium cge model with detailed energy disaggregation this study evaluates the impact of single policy instrument carbon tax and combined policy mixes in order to investigate driving factors affecting the policy performance the main findings are as follows firstly the driving factors can be classified into two types the first type of factors affects cost effectiveness significantly while the second type generates considerable effect on emission performance secondly cross border externalities function as important barriers to the co 2 emission reduction since they imply extra competitiveness loss and result in considerable carbon leakage finally this paper considers two integrated policy mixes wherein carbon tax revenue is recycled to reduce capital tax or support clean energy subsidy these policy mixes can improve both cost effectiveness and emission performance and thus perform better than carbon tax alone in this way carbon tax revenue can be used to improve the performance looking ahead complicated policy mixes are preferred to improve the performance of china s carbon tax

pigou meets mirrlees on the irrelevance of tax distortions for the second best pigouvian tax this paper extends the mirrlees 1971 model of optimal income redistribution with optimal corrective taxes to internalize consumption externalities using general utility structures and exploring both linear and non linear taxes it is demonstrated that the optimal second best tax on an externality generating good should not be corrected for the marginal cost of public funds since it equals one in the optimal tax system in the optimum distortions of income taxes are equal to marginal redistributional gains if the government does not have access to a non distortionary marginal source of finance the marginal cost of public funds can be either larger or smaller than one depending on subjective preferences for income redistribution the optimal second best corrective tax is then either higher or lower than the pigouvian level the findings in this paper generalize and amend prior results based on representative agent models shedding new light on the weak double dividend hypothesis and on the welfare gains of recycling revenue from environmental taxes

technology diffusion and the rate of technical change the way in which the process of technical change is formulated at the macroeconomic level implies generally speaking immediate diffusion or adoption of new technologies whether primarily disembodied in nature accounting for any shift in the production function as in the early technology index formulations or embodied in new investment as in the subsequent vintage growth models technical progress will be identified with advances in inventiveness or best practice technologies at first this might well seem the most appropriate way to separate out the contribution of the technology production factor from the other production factors from a straightforward economic point of view though advances in technology or best practice productivity levels are only relevant to the extent that they have been translated in actual achieved productivity levels the issue is a well known one in most empirical research on the measurement of the contribution of technical change to economic growth and has received much attention in the recent productivity slowdown debate denison i 979 griliches i980 nordhaus i980 and i 98i in particular there it was generally agreed that other technology factors including a slowdown in the rate of the spread of technology to use kendrick s i 98i term were more important than the actual decline in r d expenditure in contributing to the overall slowdown in productivity the importance of the diffusion of innovation rather than the mere occurrence of innovations is of course the major factor underlying most of the microeconomic diffusion literature the fundamental reasons for delay in adopting the so called retardation factors have been found to relate both to uncertainty and lack of information about the new technology and the often proprietary nature of the new technology since griliches i957 and mansfield s i96i seminal papers most of this literature has focused on the theoretical arguments underlying the traditional s shaped epidemic diffusion curve in more recent research particularly the mechanical static nature of these diffusion models has been questioned and various alternative diffusion models suggested including dynamic supply models metcalfe 1981 i982 stoneman i983 in which both the economic characteristics of the innovation and its diffusion environment have been made endogenous to the diffusion process these latter models in particular allow for an interpretation of the diffusion of technology in a broader macroeconomic growth and structural change perspective

sources procedures and microeconomic effects of innovation fabio arcangeli paul david frank engelman christopher freeman massimo moggi richard nelson luigi orsenigo nathan rosenberg michele salvati g n von tunzelman two anonymous referees and the participants at the meeting of the committee on distribution growth and technical progress of the italian national research council cnr rome november 16 1985 have helped with various redraftings a particularly grateful acknowledgment is for the insightful and patient help of moses abramovitz this work has been undertaken at the science policy research unit spru university of sussex as part of the research program of the designated research centre sponsored by the economic and social research council esrc earlier support to the research that led to this paper by the italian national research council cnr is also gratefully acknowledged the statistical research has been undertaken with the assistance of stephano brioschi ilaria fornari and giovannu prennushi

health effects and optimal environmental taxes abstract the literature on environmental taxation in the presence of pre existing distortionary taxes has shown that interactions with these distortions tend to raise the cost of an environmental tax and thus that the optimal environmental tax is less than marginal environmental damages a recent paper by schwartz and repetto 2000 challenges this finding arguing that the health benefits from reduced pollution will also interact with pre existing taxes and may cause the optimal environmental tax to exceed marginal damages schwartz and repetto s analysis represented health effects implicitly in the utility function in contrast the present paper explicitly represents health effects in an analytically tractable general equilibrium model this model shows that interactions with health effects from pollution actually will tend to reduce the optimal environmental tax contradicting schwartz and repetto s conclusion this demonstrates the usefulness of explicitly modeling health effects and it reinforces the general notion that tax interactions tend to raise the costs of an environmental tax

environmental taxation employment and public spending in developing countries this paper investigates the consequences of environmental tax reforms for unemployment and welfare in the case of developing countries with a large informal sector rural urban migration and three different assumptions about public spending 1 as part of a revenue neutral policy 2 fixed and 3 varying endogenously under the indexation of unemployment benefits and informal sector income that give rise to a double dividend a lower level of public spending is associated with a smaller negative impact on the after tax income of households and a higher increase in employment these policies however still lead to a reduction in social welfare even more so in the case of endogenous public spending although it is associated with a higher increase in employment and a smaller reduction in private sector incomes the model implies that complementary policy in terms of lower public spending is unlikely to be socially acceptable and does not support the case for a green tax reforms in developing countries

myth and reality of flat tax reform micro estimates of tax evasion response and welfare effects in russia we examine the effects of russia s 2001 flat rate income tax reform on consumption income and tax evasion we use the gap between household expenditures and reported earnings as a proxy for tax e

sectoral patterns of technical change towards a taxonomy and a theory abstract the purpose of the paper is to describe and explain sectoral patterns of technical change as revealed by data on about 2000 significant innovations in britain since 1945 most technological knowledge turns out not to be information that is generally applicable and easily reproducible but specific to firms and applications cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction innovating firms principally in electronics and chemicals are relatively big and they develop innovations over a wide range of specific product groups within their principal sector but relatively few outside firms principally in mechanical and instrument engineering are relatively small and specialised and they exist in symbiosis with large firms in scale intensive sectors like metal manufacture and vehicles who make a significant contribution to their own process technology in textile firms on the other hand most process innovations come from suppliers these characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms 1 supplier dominated 2 production intensive 3 science based they can be explained by sources of technology requirements of users and possibilities for appropriation this explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change firms diversification behaviour the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm the region and the country

optimal carbon taxes for emissions targets in the electricity sector the most dangerous effects of anthropogenic climate change can be mitigated by using emissions taxes or other regulatory interventions to reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions this paper takes a regulatory viewpoint and describes the weighted sum bisection method to determine the lowest emission tax rate that can reduce the anticipated emissions of the power sector below a prescribed regulatorily defined target this bilevel method accounts for a variety of operating conditions via stochastic programming and remains computationally tractable for realistically large planning test systems even when binary commitment decisions and multiperiod constraints on conventional generators are considered case studies on a modified iso new england test system demonstrate that this method reliably finds the minimum tax rate that meets emissions targets in addition it investigates the relationship between system investments and the tax setting process introducing ghg emissions taxes increases the value proposition for investment in new cleaner generation transmission and energy efficiency conversely investing in these technologies reduces the tax rate required to reach a given emissions target

a dynamic model of open source vs proprietary r d abstract we propose a dynamic model in which firms compete to produce sequential and cumulative innovations and in which the more firms do research in one sector the more likely it is that one of them innovates firms choose research effort and whether to patent innovations or to use an open source license like the general public license we show that i patents generate a larger stationary reward but foreclose research within a sector and that ii open source generates a smaller stationary reward but allows everyone to use the technology and therefore by attracting firms to the sector it induces a faster pace of innovation we characterize all the equilibria of the model and show that in equilibrium an open source sector appears only after a proprietary sector we also find conditions under which the model has a unique equilibrium in which a proprietary and an open source sector coexist and compete in the short run but the open source sector dominates the industry in the long run we use our model to study whether patents are inefficient and to explain firms behavior in the software and the biomedical industry

selective intervention and internal hybrids interpreting and learning from the rise and decline of the oticon spaghetti organization infusing hierarchies with elements of market control has become a much used way of simultaneously increasing entrepreneurialism and motivation in firms however this paper argues that such internal hybrids particularly in their radical forms are inherently hard to successfully design and implement because of a fundamental incentive problem of establishing credible managerial commitments to not intervene in delegated decision making this theme is developed and illustrated using the case of the world leading hearing aids producer oticon in the beginning of the 1990s oticon became famous for its radical internal hybrid the spaghetti organization recent work has interpreted the spaghetti organization as a radical attempt to foster dynamic capabilities by organizational means neglecting however that about a decade later the spaghetti organization has given way to a more traditional matrix organization in contrast an organizational economics interpretation of oticon organizational changes is developed this lens suggests that a strong liability of the spaghetti organization was the above incentive problem frequent managerial meddling with delegated rights led to a severe loss of motivation and arguably caused the change to a more structured organization refutable implications are developed and the discussion is broadened to more general issues of economic organization

designing climate mitigation policy this us paper provides an exhaustive review of critical issues in the design of climate mitigation policy by pulling together key findings and controversies from diverse literatures on mitigation costs damage valuation policy instrument choice technological innovation and international climate policy the authors begin with the broadest issue of how high assessments suggest the near and medium term price on greenhouse gases would need to be both under cost effective stabilization of global climate and under net benefit maximization or pigouvian emissions pricing the remainder of the paper focuses on the appropriate scope of regulation issues in policy instrument choice complementary technology policy and international policy architectures

income tax evasion an intersectoral analysis abstract this paper develops an intersectoral model of income tax evasion with general equilibrium effects key elements of the model are imperfectly substitutable outputs from the compliant and evading sectors and workers with heterogeneous evasion costs the model allows for biased public expenditures a wide range of behavioural responses and both legitimate and criminal activities evading tax as well as tax avoidance activities qualitative and quantitative assessments are undertaken for the effects of tax rate changes on evasion activity relative output prices and real tax revenues this approach offers useful findings for taxation policy and is amenable to further analytical extensions

assessing the design of three carbon trading pilot programs in china abstract to help overcome the challenge of growing co2 emissions china is experimenting with market based instruments including pilot co2 emissions trading systems etss in seven regions that serve as precursors of a national co2 ets implementing an ets in a rapidly growing economy in which government authorities exercise significant control over markets poses many challenges this study assesses how well three of the most developed pilot etss in guangdong shanghai and shenzhen have adapted carbon emissions trading to china s economic and political context we base our study on new information gathered through interviews with local pilot ets regulators and experts analysis of recent trading data and extensive legal and literature reviews we point out instances in which pilot regulators have deftly tailored carbon emissions trading to china s unique context and instances in which designs are insufficient to ensure smooth operation we also indicate areas in which broader institutional reforms of china s political economy may be required for carbon emissions trading to operate successfully we make nine recommendations to improve the design and operation of the pilot programs and to inform the construction of a national co2 ets

tax rates and tax evasion evidence from missing imports in china tax evasion by its very nature is difficult to observe we quantify the effects of tax rates on tax evasion by examining the relationship in china between the tariff schedule and the evasion gap which we define as the difference between hong kong s reported exports to china at the product level and china s reported imports from hong kong our results imply that a one percentage point increase in the tax rate is associated with a 3 percent increase in evasion furthermore the evasion gap is negatively correlated with tax rates on closely related products suggesting that evasion takes place partly through misclassification of imports from higher taxed categories to lower taxed ones in addition to underreporting the value of imports

pollution taxes and revenue recycling abstract discussions of environmental policy and the tax system have emphasized the value of pollution tax revenues which can be used to reduce other tax distortions in the economy however by raising private marginal production costs environmental taxes also tend to reduce gdp and exacerbate the welfare costs of conventional taxes for environmental taxes in consumption goods industries the net welfare change from these two effects is negative unless this good is a relatively weak substitute for leisure an estimate for the optimal pollution tax with full revenue recycling is 63 to 78 of marginal environmental damages

the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox the dynamo and the computer an historical perspective on the modern productivity paradox author s paul a david source the american economic review vol 80 no 2 papers and proceedings of the hundred and second annual meeting of the american economic association may 1990 pp 355 361 published by american economic association stable url http www jstor org stable 2006600 accessed 08 12 2010 01 40

effects of the internalization of the social cost of global and local air pollutants in chile abstract in 2017 environmental taxes on global pollutants co2 and local air pollutants so2 nox and pm began to be collected to reduce emissions in chile however large emitting sources only are subject to environmental taxes and the tax rates are much lower than the social cost of these pollutants which does not allow to fully internalize the generated damages for the above this study uses the environmental extension of the leontief price model and microsimulations to estimate the economic environmental distributive and poverty short term effects associated with the application of pigouvian taxes on all emissions generated by productive activities the results show that currently there are too many resources allocated to activities that generate strong negative externalities mainly in the electricity and transport sectors specifically the emissions are reduced almost 10 times more than in the current tax scenario if environmental taxes equal to social costs are applied but relevant negative indirect effects are generated that make the practical application of a tax of these characteristics unrealistic for example there is a fall between 1 2 and 2 9 in employment slightly worsening the income distribution and increases the poverty rate between 0 9 and 2 3 percentage points

the case against patents evidence that they serve to increase innovation and productivity unless productivity is identifi ed with the number of patents awarded which as productivity is identifi ed with the number of patents awarded which as evidence shows has no correlation with measured productivity this disconnect is evidence shows has no correlation with measured productivity this disconnect is at the root of what is called the patent puzzle in spite of the enormous increase in at the root of what is called the patent puzzle in spite of the enormous increase in the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection the us economy the number of patents and in the strength of their legal protection the us economy has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a has seen neither a dramatic acceleration in the rate of technological progress nor a major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure major increase in the levels of research and development expenditure both theory and evidence suggest that while patents can have a partial equiboth theory and evidence suggest that while patents can have a partial equilibrium effect of improving incentives to invent the general equilibrium effect on librium effect of improving incentives to invent the general equilibrium effect on innovation can be negative the historical and international evidence suggests that innovation can be negative the historical and international evidence suggests that while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects while weak patent systems may mildly increase innovation with limited side effects strong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects more generstrong patent systems retard innovation with many negative side effects more generally the initial eruption of innovations leading to the creation of a new industry from ally the initial eruption of innovations leading to the creation of a new industry from chemicals to cars from radio and television to personal computers and investment chemicals to cars from radio and television to personal computers and investment banking is seldom if ever born out of patent protection and is instead the fruit of a banking is seldom if ever born out of patent protection and is instead the fruit of a competitive environment it is only after the initial stage of rampant growth ends that competitive environment it is only after the initial stage of rampant growth ends that mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents usually because their mature industries turn toward the legal protection of patents usually because their internal growth potential diminishes and they become more concentrated these internal growth potential diminishes and they become more concentrated these observations supported by a steadily increasing body of evidence are consistent with observations supported by a steadily increasing body of evidence are consistent with

environmental policy in the presence of induced technological change we examine the hypothesis that induced technological change itc can dramatically lower the cost of a carbon tax in a static optimal tax model the research and development sector is represented by an aggregate stock of energy saving technology which acts as a weak substitute with a polluting resource in the energy generation sector using this model we analytically show how itc occurs and affects the cost of a carbon tax applying quantitative estimates of the size of itc to numerical simulations calibrated to the us economy we find that existing empirical evidence can reduce the welfare cost of environmental tax reform by 12 our tests of alternative parameters show that this result is highly sensitive to the assumptions used suggesting that itc could result in much larger reductions in cost

cheating ourselves the economics of tax evasion no government can announce a tax system and then rely on taxpayers sense of duty to remit what is owed some dutiful people will undoubtedly pay what they owe but many others will not over time the ranks of the dutiful will shrink as they see how they are being taken advantage of by the others thus paying taxes must be made a legal responsibility of citizens with penalties attendant on noncompliance but even in the face of those penalties substantial tax evasion exists and always has the history of taxation is replete with episodes of evasion often notable for their inventiveness during the third century many wealthy romans buried their jewelry or stocks of gold coin to evade the luxury tax and homeowners in eighteenth century england temporarily bricked up their fireplaces to escape notice of the hearth tax collector webber and wildavsky 1986 p 141 this essay reviews what is known about the magnitude nature and determinants of tax evasion with an emphasis on the u s income tax alm 1999 andreoni erard and feinstein 1998 and slemrod and yitzhaki 2002 offer more comprehensive recent reviews of the literature it then places this information into a conceptual and policy context

poverty and distributional effects of carbon pricing in low and middle income countries a global comparative analysis abstract even though concerns about adverse distributional implications for the poor are one of the most important political challenges for carbon pricing the existing literature reveals ambiguous results for this reason we assess the expected incidence of moderate carbon price increases for different income groups in 87 mostly low and middle income countries building on a consistent dataset and method we find that for countries with per capita incomes of below usd 15 000 per year at ppp adjusted 2011 usd carbon pricing has on average progressive distributional effects we also develop a novel decomposition technique to show that distributional outcomes are primarily determined by differences among income groups in consumption patterns of energy rather than of food goods or services we argue that an inverse u shape relationship between energy expenditure shares and income explains why carbon pricing tends to be regressive in countries with relatively higher income since these countries are likely to have more financial resources and institutional capacities to deal with distributional issues our findings suggest that mitigating climate change raising domestic revenue and reducing economic inequality are not mutually exclusive even in low and middle income countries

optimal environmental taxation in the presence of other taxes general equilibrium analyses this paper examines the optimal setting of environmental taxes in economies where other distortionary taxes are present we employ analytical and numerical models to explore the degree to which in a second best economy optimal environmental tax rates differ from the rates implied by the pigovian principle according to which the optimal tax rate equals the marginal environmental damages both models indicate contrary to what several analysts have suggested that the optimal tax rate on emissions of a given pollutant is generally less than the rate supported by the pigovian principle moreover the optimal rate is lower the larger are the distortions posed by ordinary taxes numerical results indicate that previous studies may have seriously overstated the size of the optimal carbon tax by disregarding pre existing taxes this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

on limiting or encouraging rivalry in technical progress the effect of patent scope decisions abstract this essay is on the effects of the scope of a patent e g how broad its allowed claims on subsequent inventing in a field it is argued that this depends on the topography of technical advance in a field in particular on how inventions are linked to each other and in the extent to which rapid technical advance requires a diversity of actors and minds as contrasted with being facilitated by express coordination of inventive activity technical advance is examined in several different fields with a focus on how patents influenced the pace and quality of development the authors conclude that allowing and enforcing broad patent claims tends to hinder technical progress

does the new economy measure up to the great inventions of the past abstract during the four years 1995 99 u s productivity growth experienced a strong revival and achieved growth rates exceeding that of the golden age of 1913 72 accordingly many observers have declared the new economy to be an industrial revolution even more important than the second industrial revolution of 1860 1900 which made the golden age of productivity growth possible this paper dissects the recent productivity revival subtracts out a cyclical component and concludes that there is no revival of the productivity growth trend in the 88 percent of the private economy lying outside of the durables manufacturing sector the paper explains this surprising finding by pointing to limitations in computers and the internet in comparison with the great inventions of the past

capitalism as an engine of progress economists from marx to schumpeter have touted capitalism as an engine of technical progress but what kind of an engine is it what are its key components how does it work

tax evasion and optimal environmental taxes abstract this paper introduces a new argument to the debate about the role of environmental taxes in modern tax systems some environmental taxes particularly taxes on gasoline or electricity are more difficult to evade than taxes on labor or income when the tax base is shifted in a revenue neutral manner toward these environmental taxes the result is a net reduction in the amount of tax evasion using a carbon tax as a motivating example the tax evasion effect is shown to sharply reduce the welfare cost of controlling emissions a simple computable general equilibrium model suggests that the impact of considering tax evasion can be large costs are lowered by 28 in the united states by 89 in china and by 97 in india in countries with high levels of pre existing tax evasion a carbon tax will pay for itself through improvements in the efficiency of the tax system

patents and innovation evidence from economic history abstract what is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been di

competition cooperation and the neighboring farmer effect abstract in this paper we propose a model that explains how cooperation can emerge spontaneously between firms in a highly competitive market environment the basic idea is that the more competitive is the market the less costly it is for firms to help each other like good neighbors cooperation takes the form of sharing technical know how which speeds up the adoption of new technologies normally developed elsewhere that spur industrial development the model comports with the development history of japan s first example of successful industrial development its cotton spinning industry whose conditions match those of firms in small open economies today

collective invention during the british industrial revolution the case of the cornish pumping engine in this paper we argue that together with individual inventors and firms what robert c allen 1983 has termed as collective invention settings that is settings in which rival firms freely release each other pertinent technical information were also a crucial source of innovation in the industrial revolution period until now this has been very little considered in the literature this paper focuses on one of these cases the cornish mining district in cornwall during the early nineteenth century a notable collective invention setting gradually emerged this case is particularly remarkable because it was capable of generating a continuous and sustained flow of improvements in steam pumping technology which in the end greatly contributed to improve the thermodynamic efficiency of the steam engine in this paper we study in detail the specific economic circumstances that led to the formation of this collective invention setting and we analyses its consequences for the rate of technological innovation

environmental tax interactions when pollution affects health or productivity abstract recent studies indicate that interactions with the tax distorted labor market increase the cost of pollution regulation however these studies make restrictive assumptions regarding preferences and ignore key links between pollution human health and labor productivity together these assumptions imply that pollution does not affect labor supply this paper develops an analytical general equilibrium model that considers several potential benefits from reduced pollution including improved health or productivity it shows that these benefits affect labor supply and thus create a benefit side tax interaction effect that can be of the same magnitude as the familiar cost side interaction when reduced pollution boosts labor productivity the effect substantially magnifies such benefits in contrast when pollution affects consumer health the effect tends to diminish the benefits of reduced pollution the paper considers only environmental regulation but these concepts apply equally to other policies affecting productivity or health such as research subsidies or occupational safety regulations

tax evasion and optimal commodity taxation abstract this paper incorporates tax evasion into ramsey s optimal taxation problem it provides i a precise and intuitive characterization of the tradeoff between optimal tax rates and audit probabilities and ii a modified version of the ramsey equation it also proves that in the presence of tax evasion a the well known requirement of proportional reduction in compensated demands b the traditional result on the optimality of uniform taxation when income is exogenous and c the equivalence of wage and uniform commodity taxes are no longer valid

spatial linkages and export processing location in china this paper provides empirical evidence that spatial linkages matter for the localisation of global value chain activities relying on processing trade data for chinese provinces during the period 1997 2008 we investigate whether a chinese province s proximity to international suppliers and international buyers within an industry chain affects its attractiveness as an export processing location we find that the upstream and downstream spatial linkages both have a strong and independent explanatory power we also explore what factors explain the influence of these spatial linkages

climate change policy why has so little been achieved while the scientific evidence for climate change grows the policy responses have so far had little or no impact on the build up of emissions current trends in emissions are adverse the paper considers why the disconnect between science and policy exists and in particular why the kyoto protocol has achieved so little some contributing factors considered are the focus on carbon production rather than consumption in the architecture of kyoto the flaws in the analysis presented in the stern report notably on the impacts of climate change on economic growth on the costs of mitigation and on discounting and the political economy of the choice of policy instruments the politics of the rents that arise and the technology bias the challenges facing the copenhagen conference are noted and it is concluded that with a recasting of the economics of climate change the prospects for closing the gap between the science and policy are grim

the economics of technical change this paper reviews the recent rapidly growing literature on technical change in the economy it concentrates on innovations and their diffusion at firm and industry level since this was the area designated as relatively weak in earlier literature surveys the review argues that the extensive empirical evidence and theoretical analysis now available presents a basic challenge to neoclassical theory after indicating some weaknesses in the neo schumpeterian literature the paper concludes by advocating an experiment with a new form of assessment by neighboring disciplines to economics itself which would take full account of the fundamental issues at stake in this modern methodenstreit c 1994 academic press inc copyright 1994 by oxford university press