Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review最新文献

This paper quantitatively analyzes how the interdependence of components and the complexity of technology relates to the formation of technological trajectories. This paper uses the idea of technological trajectory and a method called a main path analysis. Technological trajectory is an idea that describes the path-dependent technological evolution process. The technological trajectories of a technological field can be represented as the main paths of patent citation networks. This paper aims to elucidate some of the determinants of the evolution of technological trajectories using main path analysis. The hypotheses are derived from a model called the NK Model. The NK model describes the respective roles of the interdependence of components and of complexity in complex adaptive systems. Using the NK model, it can be understood that technologies with an intermediate level of interdependence and technologies with an intermediate level of complexity tend to be more successful than other technologies. According to the result, the patents on the main paths of this technological field are concentrated at the intermediate level of interdependence but the patents on the main paths of this technological field are not concentrated at the intermediate level of technological complexity. Additionally, in the technological field’s early stage, the interdependence values of patents that are locked-in within technological trajectories are high, whereas the same values of the later stage are low. This observation is also consistent with the idea of technological trajectories. These results suggest that the NK model is a useful tool to understand the formation of technological trajectories.

The paper has two basic objectives. The first, is to present the evolution of the process of sustainable development in the European Union (EU). We provide evidence that over time, the concept of sustainable development as a broad policy objective has been steadily declining in importance giving way to the less multidimensional strategy of green growth. We argue that the green growth strategy is actually based on the strategic selection of the traditional economic growth model, taking into account certain environmental aspects. We show that environmental protection expenditure is growing much slower than per capita income. Looking at the investment on environmental protection, we document a clear falling trend. Our findings imply that both the social and the environmental dimension of sustainability have been losing ground and the traditional goal of economic growth is being restored. The second, is to provide some assessment of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the process of sustainable development in the EU. Considering the relevant EU forecasts on the immediate effects of the pandemic, we conclude that it will severely hinder the process of sustainability in the EU in the short term. The long-term effects of the pandemic cannot even be outlined, especially at the level of the individual member states. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the Recovery and Resilience Facility as key instrument of recovery and of national recovery and resilience plans, will play a decisive role in minimising or even neutralising the negative longer-term effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

We introduce two labour productivity indexes. Both indexes are intended to capture the shift in the short-run production frontier, which can be attributed to technological progress or growth in capital inputs. The two indexes adopt distinct approaches to measuring the distance between the production frontiers. One is based on the distance function and the other is based on the profit function. In the end, we show that these two theoretical measures coincide with the index number formulae that are computable from the observable prices and quantities of output and input. By applying these formulae to the U.S. industry data of the years 1970–2005, we compare newly proposed labour productivity indexes with the average labour productivity growth over periods and across industries. We revisit the hypothesis of Baumol’s disease throughout our observations on the trend of industry labour productivities in the service sector.