Microdynamics of Technological Change (Hardcover, New)

The emergence in recent years of a knowledge-based economy, and the seismic, structural changes it has wrought in the advanced economies, have been the subject of intense debate in economics. This volume presents a comprehensive assessment of the economic effects of the emerging information and communication technologies associated with a knowledge-based economy, and looks at how knowledge is increasingly treated as a product in its own right. A framework is developed to comprehend these fundamental shifts, based on three bodies of knowledge: the economics of path dependence and of historical time as they are elaborated in the economics of new technologies; economic topology based on the methodology of network analysis; and the new economics of knowledge and the concept of localized technological change. The text provides an analytical framework for the study of the transition of advanced economic systems towards a knowledge-based economy.