Institutions and Policies Shaping Industrial Development: An Introductory Note

In this work, meant as an introduction to the contributions of the task force on Industrial Policies and Development, Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, New York, we discuss the role of institutions and policies in the process of development. We begin by arguing how misleading the "market failure" language can be in order to assess the necessity of public policies in that it evaluates it against a yardstick that is hardly met by any observed market set-up. Much nearer to the empirical evidence we argue that even when one encounters a prevailing market form of governance of economic interactions, the latter are embedded in a rich thread of non-market institutions. This applies in general and is particularly so with respect to the production and use of information and technological knowledge. In this work we build on the fundamental institutional embeddedness of such processes of technological learning in both developed and catching-up countries and we try to identify some quite robust policy ingredients which have historically accompanied the co-evolution between technological capabilities, forms of corporate organisations and incentive structures. All experiences of successful catching-up and sometimes overtaking the incumbent economic leaders – starting with the USA vis-à-vis Britain – have involved “institution building” and policy measures affecting technological imitation, the organisations of industries, trade patterns and intellectual property rights. This is likely to apply today, too, – we argue – also in the context of a “globalised” world economy.Institutions, development, industrial policies, technological catching-up, trade specialisations.

Product Service System Innovation in the Smart City

Product service systems (PSS) may usefully form part of the mix of innovations necessary to move society toward more sustainable futures. However, despite such potential, PSS implementation is highly uneven and limited. Drawing on an alternate socio-technical perspective of innovation, this paper provides fresh insights, on among other things the role of context in PSS innovation, to address this issue. Case study research is presented focusing on a use orientated PSS in an urban environment: the Copenhagen city bike scheme. The paper shows that PSS innovation is a situated complex process, shaped by actors and knowledge from other locales. It argues that further research is needed to investigate how actors interests shape PSS innovation. It recommends that institutional spaces should be provided in governance landscapes associated with urban environments to enable legitimate PSS concepts to co-evolve in light of locally articulated sustainability principles and priorities

Industry dynamics, technological regimes and the role of demand

In this paper, we propose an industrial dynamics model to analyze the interactions between the price-performance sensitivity of demand, the sources of innovation in a sector, and certain features of the corresponding pattern of industrial transformation. More precisely, we study market concentration in different technological regimes and demand conditions. The computational analysis of our model shows that market demand plays a key role in industrial dynamics. Thus, although for intermediate values of the price-performance sensitivity, our results show the well-known relationships in the literature between technological regimes and industry transformation, we find surprising outcomes when demand is strongly biased either towards price or performance. Hence, for different technological regimes, a high performance sensitivity of demand tends to concentrate the market. On the other hand, under conditions of high price sensitivity, the industry generally tends to atomize. That is to say, for extreme values of the price-performance sensitivity of demand, we find concentrated or atomized market structures no matter the technological regime we are in. These results highlight the importance of considering the role of demand in the analysis of industrial dynamics

The Citation Field of Evolutionary Economics

Evolutionary economics has developed into an academic field of its own, institutionalized around, amongst others, the Journal of Evolutionary Economics (JEE). This paper analyzes the way and extent to which evolutionary economics has become an interdisciplinary journal, as its aim was: a journal that is indispensable in the exchange of expert knowledge on topics and using approaches that relate naturally with it. Analyzing citation data for the relevant academic field for the Journal of Evolutionary Economics, we use insights from scientometrics and social network analysis to find that, indeed, the JEE is a central player in this interdisciplinary field aiming mostly at understanding technological and regional dynamics. It does not, however, link firmly with the natural sciences (including biology) nor to management sciences, entrepreneurship, and organization studies. Another journal that could be perceived to have evolutionary acumen, the Journal of Economic Issues, does relate to heterodox economics journals and is relatively more involved in discussing issues of firm and industry organization. The JEE seems most keen to develop theoretical insights