Economic development by the creation of new sectors

The basic theme underlying this paper is qualitative change taking place during economic development. These changes in the composition of the economic system should become one of the most important variables in models of economic growth and development. Our knowledge of the relationship between economic development and qualitative change, however, is still very limited. This paper attempts to shed light on some important aspects of the role played by qualitative change in economic development, by laying the foundations of a model in which changes in the composition of the economic system are endogenously generated by the evolution of the system itself and, in turn, affect its future development. To put it shortly, we can say that economic development is a process in which new activities emerge, old ones disappear, the weight of all economic activities and their patterns of interaction change

Variety and the evolution of refinery processing

Evolutionary theories of economic development stress the role of variety as both a determinant and a result of growth. In this paper we develop a measure of variety, based on Weitzman's maximum likelihood procedure. This measure is based on the distance between products, and indicates the degree of differentiation of a product population. We propose a generic method, which permits to regroup the products with very similar characteristics values before choosing randomly the product models to be used to calculate Weitzman's measure. We apply the variety measure to process characteristics of oil refining. The results obtained for this technology show classic evolutionary specialization patterns that can be understood on the basis of niche theory. Here the changes in variety are related to changes in the range of the services the technology considered can deliver, range which plays a role similar to that of the size of the habitat of a biological species.TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION; REFINERY PROCESSES; NICHE THEORY; WEITZMAN MEASURE

Prediction of Emerging Technologies Based on Analysis of the U.S. Patent Citation Network

The network of patents connected by citations is an evolving graph, which provides a representation of the innovation process. A patent citing another implies that the cited patent reflects a piece of previously existing knowledge that the citing patent builds upon. A methodology presented here (i) identifies actual clusters of patents: i.e. technological branches, and (ii) gives predictions about the temporal changes of the structure of the clusters. A predictor, called the {citation vector}, is defined for characterizing technological development to show how a patent cited by other patents belongs to various industrial fields. The clustering technique adopted is able to detect the new emerging recombinations, and predicts emerging new technology clusters. The predictive ability of our new method is illustrated on the example of USPTO subcategory 11, Agriculture, Food, Textiles. A cluster of patents is determined based on citation data up to 1991, which shows significant overlap of the class 442 formed at the beginning of 1997. These new tools of predictive analytics could support policy decision making processes in science and technology, and help formulate recommendations for action

Diversity Structure of the Schumpeterian Evolution: An Axiomatic Approach

The purpose of the paper is to impose the diversity structure on the Schumpeterian evolution modelled axiomatically within a dynamical system approach to the Arrow-Debreu theory of general equilibrium. In this framework two basic forms of economic life studied by Schumpeter, i.e., the circular flow and economic development are investigated as specific properties of a dynamic system, where single production systems being the parts of the Debreu models change in the definite environment according to the rules of the Schumpeterian evolution. Moreover, the Sterling diversity-triplet concept based on subcategories of variety, balance and disparity, is slightly modified and applied to serve as a tool for rigorous analysis of innovative and cumulative changes in production system with respect to diversity structure. Finally, integrating diversity aspects into a dynamic system approach, the study identifies innovative processes as the source of growing diversity in the Schumpeterian vision of economic development

The struggle for existence in the world market ecosystem

The global trade system can be viewed as a dynamic ecosystem in which exporters struggle for resources: the markets in which they export. We can think that the aim of an exporter is to gain the entirety of a market share (say, car imports from the United States). This is similar to the objective of an organism in its attempt to monopolize a given subset of resources in an ecosystem. In this paper, we adopt a multilayer network approach to describe this struggle. We use longitudinal, multiplex data on trade relations, spanning several decades. We connect two countries with a directed link if the source country's appearance in a market correlates with the target country's disappearing, where a market is defined as a country-product combination in a given decade. Each market is a layer in the network. We show that, by analyzing the countries' network roles in each layer, we are able to classify them as out-competing, transitioning or displaced. This classification is a meaningful one: when testing the future export patterns of these countries, we show that out-competing countries have distinctly stronger growth rates than the other two classes

Fiscal Policy, Economic Growth and Innovation: An Empirical Analysis of G20 Countries

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of public expenditures on economic growth within the analytical framework of comprehensive Neo-Schumpeterian economics. Using a fixed-effects model for G20 countries, the paper investigates the links between the specific categories of public expenditures and economic growth, captured in human capital formation, defense, infrastructure development, and technological innovation. The results reveal that the impact of innovation-related spending on economic growth is much higher than that of the other macro variables. Data for the study was drawn from the International Monetary Fund's Government Finance Statistics database, infrastructure reports for the G20 countries, and the World Development Indicators issued by the World Bank

The entrepreneurial ladder, gender, and regional development

Gender differences at five levels of entrepreneurial engagement are explained using country effects while controlling for individual-level variables. We distinguish between individuals who have never considered starting up a business, those who are thinking about it, and nascent, young, and established entrepreneurs. We use a large international dataset that includes respondents from 32 European countries, three Asian countries, and the United States. Findings show that cross-country gender differences are largest in the first and final transitions of the entrepreneurial process. In par