Giovanni Dosi

Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies | SSSUP · Institute of Economics

This article discusses the case of the minimimum wage for Italy as a policy instrument to foster both social justice and productive efficiency. After briefly reviewing the empirical evidence on the effects of minimum wages upon employment, wage distribution and firm-level reallocation, it presents a series of channels, from the micro to the macro l...

A large number of countries have by now pledged to undertake policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving carbon neutrality in the coming decades. However, evidence on the suitable policy package to induce an effective and orderly transition is scarce. Recent studies suggest that abrupt and aggressive climate policy may induce...

The purpose of this work is to study the joint interaction of three founding elements of modern capitalism, namely endogenous technical change, income distribution, and labor markets, within a low-dimensional nonlinear dynamic setup extending the Goodwin model. Going beyond the conservative structure typical of the predator–prey model, we insert an...

What is rentified capitalism? And, how can we characterise its unfolding into the socio-economic sphere? This paper theoretically and empirically defines attributes and trends of rentified capitalism, that we shall argue, it is more than a stage of capitalism, but it rather represents a new socio-economic paradigm characterised by the primacy of re...

Even the most rudimentary training from Economics 101 starts with demand curves going down and supply curves going up. They are so ‘natural’ that they sound even more obvious than the Euclidian postulates in mathematics. But are they? What do they actually mean? Start with “demand curves”. Are they hypothetical ‘psychological constructs’ on individ...

How does Italy position inside the European structure of trade relationships? How labour bilateral flows have changed over time? Which type of employment activity has been outsourced? Which insourced? Focusing on a three-country perspective, what are the employment bilateral relationships between Italy-Germany-Poland (descending periphery-core-asce...

This paper is one of the first attempts at empirically identifying organizational capabilities—in this work concerning Italian firms. Together, it proposes new evidence on the link between capabilities and economic performances. To this aim, we employ the Indagine Multiscopo del Censimento Permanente delle Imprese (IMCPI), a survey carried out by t...

This paper presents an agent-based model (ABM) of endogenous arrival of technological paradigms and new sectors entailing different patterns of labour creation and destruction, as well as of consumption dynamics. The model, building on the labour-augmented K+S ABM, addresses the long-term patterns of labour demand emerging from heterogeneous forms...

This work addresses the role of inter-sectoral innovation flows, which we frame as technological interdependencies, in determining sectoral employment dynamics. This purpose is achieved through the construction of an indicator capturing the amount of R&D expenditures embodied in the backward linkages of industries. We aim to find out whether having...

In this article we focus on the role of exports in Chinese economic development in the era of WTO accession. We address a series of different, although connected, questions. First, do Chinese exporting and non-exporting firms differ in terms of their productivity performance and paid wages? Second, to what extent exporting and non-exporting firms h...

This paper, using a long-term, product-level, cross-country dataset, analyzes the trade–growth nexus by introducing two novel indicators able to capture demand and supply attributes of countries’ quality of specialization. The Keynesian efficiency index measures demand attractiveness of the export baskets, estimating product-level demand elasticiti...

This paper, using a long-term, product-level cross-country dataset, analyzes the trade-growth nexus by introducing two novel indicators able to capture demand and supply attributes of countries' quality of specialization. The Keynesian efficiency index measures demand attractiveness of the export baskets, estimating product-level demand elasticitie...

Lockdown and vaccination policies have been the major concern in the last year in order to contain the SARS-CoV-2 infection during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we present a model able to evaluate alternative lockdown policies and vaccination strategies. Our approach integrates and refines the multiscale model proposed by Bellomo et al., 20...

We propose a novel methodology for computing variations of aggregate productivity and its decomposition into changes of individual firms’ productivities and of industry composition. Industry productivity should be measured in principle on industry total inputs and outputs but it is believed that this measure does not allow for such decomposition. T...

This paper contributes to an old and still unresolved question in the theory of organizations, namely, what do bosses do? Whether and to what extent managerial functions are productive or not for the well functioning of an organization has to be understood with respect to the tension between knowledge and power. Here, we start addressing such a ten...

The modeling of living systems composed of many interacting entities is treated in this paper with the aim of describing their collective behaviors. The mathematical approach is developed within the general framework of the kinetic theory of active particles. The presentation is in three parts. First, we derive the mathematical tools, subsequently,...

What has been the dynamics of productivity in the Italian business firms in the aftermath of the crisis? And what has been the impact of training efforts upon such dynamics? In this work, we address these questions exploring a unique Italian micro-level dataset which links information on the amount and the nature of training and firm balance-sheet...

This paper addresses, both theoretically and empirically, the sectoral patterns of job creation and job destruction in order to distinguish the alternative effects of embodied vs disembodied technological change operating into a two-sector economy. Disembodied technological change turns out to positively affect employment dynamics in the “upstream”...

This work presents an original proposal for the reform of the Eurozone architecture according to an approach based on risk sharing (aiming to reach in the long-term the mutualization of public debt). The proposal envisages a new role for the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) which should gradually become the guarantor of the public debts of the Eu...

Contrary to the notion of a natural tendency in deindustrialization, this paper, performing a cross-country long-term analysis, documents the existence of a variety of patterns of deindustrialization. Looking at industrial sectors and their technological characteristics, categorised on the ground of the Pavitt (1984) taxonomy, we do find a markedly...

This article presents an Agent-Based Model (ABM) that seeks to explain the concordance of sluggish growth of productivity and of real wages found in macroeconomic statistics, and the increased dispersion of firm productivity and worker earnings found in micro level statistics in advanced economies at the turn of the 21st century. It shows that a si...

This paper is a first step to chase the ambitious objective of developing a mathmatical theory of living systems. The contents refer modeling large systems of interacting living entities with the aim of describing their collective behaviors by differential models. The contents is in three parts. Firstly, we derive the mathematical method; subsequen...

In this article, we study the effects of industrial policies on international convergence using a multicountry agent-based model which builds upon Dosi et al. (2019b, J. Econ. Dyn. Control, 101, 101–129). The model features a group of microfounded economies, with evolving industries, populated by heterogeneous firms that compete in international ma...

Economic growth and development of a country involves the accumulation of knowledge and dynamic capabilities. Past research has begun to investigate capability accumulation and macro-economic development of countries and sectors, and the role of new products in these processes. In this work, we focus on the firm-level process of capability accumula...

This work discusses the role of industrial policies within an evolutionary view of innovation and learning as drivers of economic development. Building on the notions of technological paradigms and trajectories, it links the processes of catching up with the dynamics of capability accumulation within and across firms. Technological paradigms provid...

We maintain that Chris Freeman’s approach to the study of the interplay between technical change and economic growth is still a very fertile source of insights. Alas, in much of mainstream research Freeman’s contribution is hardly considered. We show that this is a result of the basic assumptions of neoclassical growth theory (both “old” and “new”)...

The explosion of the pandemic has been optimistically considered as the “last straw that breaks the camel’s back”. At the time of writing, after three months since its outburst, we can hardly find any sign of a “broken camel”: indeed, it could have been the opportunity to collectively question the current regime of production and appropriation, exc...

Firm growth is an essential feature of market economies, shaping together macroeconomic performance and the evolution of industry structures. As a potential indicator of organizational "fitness" within a competitive environment, firm growth is also a central concern to both the practice and theory of business strategy. Despite both its theoretical...

This paper is devoted to the multidisciplinary modelling of a pandemic initiated by an aggressive virus, specifically the so-called SARS–CoV–[Formula: see text] Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, corona virus n.[Formula: see text]. The study is developed within a multiscale framework accounting for the interaction of different spatial scales, from...

This paper constitutes the first attempt to bridge the evolutionary theory in economics and the theory of active particles in mathematics. It seeks to present a kinetic model for an evolutionary formalization of economic dynamics. The new derived mathematical representation intends to formalize the processes of learning and selection as the two fun...

This paper is devoted to the multidisciplinary modelling of a pandemic initiated by an aggressive virus, specifically the so-called \textit{SARS--CoV--2 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, corona virus n.2}. The study is developed within a multiscale framework accounting for the interaction of different spatial scales, from the small scale of the vi...

The Editorial Board of Industrial and Corporate Change is pleased to announce its newest venture as part of ICC’s ongoing commitment to highlighting important issues in management, economics, and business: starting in 2021 ICC intends to launch an annual Special Issue devoted to the theme of Macro Economics and Development. As important economists...

The explosion of the pandemic has been optimistically considered as the "last straw that breaks the camel's back". At the time of writing, after three months since its outburst , we can hardly find any sign of a "broken camel": indeed, it could have been the opportunity to collectively question the current regime of production and appropriation , e...

In this work we discuss the research findings from the labour-augmented Schumpeter meeting Keynes (K + S) agent-based model. It comprises comparative dynamics experiments on an artificial economy populated by heterogeneous, interacting agents, as workers, firms, banks and the government. The exercises are characterized by different degrees of labou...

In this paper we employ an agent-based integrated assessment model to study the likelihood of transition to green, sustainable growth in presence of climate damages. The model comprises heterogeneous fossil-fuel and renewable plants, capital- and consumption-good firms and a climate box linking greenhouse gasses emission to temperature dynamics and...

We analyze the individual and macroeconomic impacts of heterogeneous expectations and action rules within an agent‐based model populated by heterogeneous, interacting firms. Agents have to cope with a complex evolving economy characterized by deep uncertainty resulting from technical change, imperfect information, coordination hurdles, and structur...

This paper highlights new findings on the wage-productivity nexus in the World Factory Economy. After presenting the long-run macro-elasticity characterizing the phase of Chinese economic development since the eighties, we look at the wage-productivity nexus from a micro level perspective using a detailed firm-level dataset covering the period of o...

Resumen En este artículo se investiga si las sociedades asisten a una nueva revolución industrial, y cuál es la repercusión del cambio tecnológico en el tejido socioeconómico, principalmente con respecto al empleo, la distribución de la renta, las condiciones de trabajo y las relaciones laborales. Los autores sostienen que los procesos de innovació...

Résumé Nos sociétés vivent‐elles aujourd'hui une nouvelle révolution industrielle? Les auteurs s'efforcent de répondre à cette question à partir d'une évaluation des conséquences des changements technologiques sur le tissu socio‐économique actuel, notamment sous l'angle de l'emploi, des inégalités, des conditions de travail et des relations profess...

In response to our paper, ‘ECB monetary expansions and euro area TARGET2 imbalances: a balance-of-payment-based decomposition,’ Professor Andrea Terzi has criticized our approach of TARGET2 balance decomposition, by highlighting a lack of causality between balance-of-payments (BP) flows and TARGET2 net balances. Proving a strong causality link was...

This paper provides a compact overview of the interpretations of the “primitive entities” constituting the social fabric of economic systems according to different social science traditions. In our view, it is possible to reconstruct two meta-narratives on the origins of the theoretical primitives which are at the roots of different social sciences...

The reflections which follow build on two interrelated questions, namely, first, whether we are witnessing another “industrial revolution”, and second, what is the impact of technological transformations upon the current dynamics of the socio‐economic fabric, especially with respect to employment, income distribution, working conditions and labour...

This ICC Special Issue commemorates the life and work of Professor Nathan Rosenberg. Nathan Rosenberg was one of the founders of the interdisciplinary field of study known as the "economics of innovation," and this Issue contains a series of papers by leading scholars in the field that address some of the key themes of Rosenberg's work, as well as...

In this work we study the granular origins of business cycles and their possible underlying drivers. As shown by Gabaix (Econometrica 79:733–772, 2011), the skewed nature of firm size distributions implies that idiosyncratic (and independent) firm-level shocks may account for a significant portion of aggregate volatility. Yet, we question the origi...

This work nests the Agent-Based macroeconomic perspective into the earlier history of macroeconomics. We discuss how the discipline in the 70’s took a perverse path relying on models grounded on fictitious rational representative agent in order to try to pathetically circumvent aggregation and coordination problems. The Great Recession was a natura...

In this paper we present a multi-country, multi-industry agent-based model investigating the different growth patterns of interdependent economies. Each country features a Schumpeterian engine of endogenous technical change which interacts with Keyneasian/Kaldorian demand generation mechanisms. National trajectories are driven by firms’ accumulatio...

In this work we develop a set of labour market and fiscal policy experiments upon the labour- and credit- augmented “Schumpeter meeting Keynes” agent-based model. The labour market is declined under two institutional variants, the “Fordist” and the “Competitive” set-ups meant to capture the historical transition from the post-WWII toward the post T...

In this work we develop an agent-based model where hysteresis in major macroeconomic variables (e.g., gross domestic product, productivity, unemployment) emerges out of the decentralized interactions of heterogeneous firms and workers. Building upon the “Schumpeter meeting Keynes” family of models (cf. in particular Dosi et al. (2016b, 2017c)), we...

This work analyses the effects of labour market structural reforms by means of the labour-augmented 'Schumpeter meeting Keynes' (K+S) Agent-Based model. We introduce a policy regime change characterized by a set of structural reforms on the labour market. Confirming a recent IMF report, the model shows how structural reforms reducing workers' barga...

The recent financial literature seems to have reached a consensus about the influence of European Central Bank (ECB) unconventional monetary policies in explaining the multiple divergent trends of TARGET2 (T2) balances in the eurozone from 2010 and the ensuing segregation of risks in each national economy. According to the ECB, ‘mechanical’ effects...

The recent financial literature seems to have reached a consensus about the influence of European Central Bank (ECB) unconventional monetary policies in explaining the multiple divergent trends of TARGET2 (T2) balances in the eurozone from 2010 and the ensuing segregation of risks in each national economy. According to the ECB, ‘mechanical’ effects...

In this work we develop an agent-based model that offers an alternative to standard, computable general equilibrium integrated assessment models (IAMs). The Dystopian Schumpeter meeting Keynes (DSK) model is composed of heterogeneous firms belonging to capital-good, consumption-good and energy sectors. Production and energy generation lead to green...

In order to make quality strategic decisions, managers need a deep understanding of industry dynamics and enterprise capabilities. In this book, we present a conceptual framework that will help executives lead their organizations in highly competitive global markets. For some, it will change frames of reference and accepted priorities in terms of w...

Regarding your Free exchange column purporting to review how economists understand growth (April 14th), we also share serious misgivings about the adequacy of the analysis of economic growth that one sees in the standard textbooks and in much of the current literature. Granting the legitimacy of that target, however, we found that you fell short wh...

Cambridge Core - Entrepreneurship and Innovation - Modern Evolutionary Economics - by Richard R. Nelson

The notions of technological paradigms and technological trajectories are central to the interpretation of innovation as an evolutionary process and to the understanding of invariances in the knowledge structure and in the ways technological knowledge accumulates and, together, what distinguishes different fields and different periods of technologi...

Path dependence may be defined over a spectrum of phenomena ranging from mere dependence upon initial conditions to strong dependence upon a specific unfolding of events. It is observable at various layers of the economic system, ranging from the individual up to the aggregate system level. At the technology level, path dependence shows up when the...

The patterns of innovation diffusion are well approximated by the logistic curves. This is the robust empirical fact confirmed by many studies in innovations dynamics. Here, we show that the logistic pattern of innovation diffusion can be replicated by the time-dependent stochastic process with positive feedbacks along the diffusion trajectory. The...

In this work we discuss the research findings from the labour-augmented Schumpeter meeting Keynes (K + S) agent-based model. It comprises comparative dynamics experiments on an artificial economy populated by heterogeneous, interacting agents, as workers, firms, banks and the government. The exercises are characterized by different degrees of labou...

In this work, we discuss how the rich academic milieu left by different Italian political economy traditions after WWII paved the way for the development of a new generation of macroeconomic agent-based models. The K + S (Dosi et al. in J Econ Dyn Control 34:1748–1767, 2010; Dosi et al. in J Evol Econ. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00191-016-0466-4, 201...

"Learning-by-doing" is usually identified as a process whereby performance increases with experience in production. Of course such form of learning is complementary to other patterns of capability accumulation. Still, it is fundamental to assess its importance in the process of development. The paper investigates different patterns of "learning by...

This work explores the dynamics of the ‘virtuous circle’ driving the impressive Chinese catching-up and growth by investigating the micro relationships linking productivity, profitability, investment and growth, based on China's manufacturing firm-level dataset over the period 1998–2007. Interestingly and somewhat puzzlingly, we find that productiv...

In this work we discuss the main building blocks, achievements and challenges of an evolutionary interpretation of the relation between mechanisms of coordination and drivers of change in modern economies, seen as complex evolving systems. It is an evident stylised fact of modern economic systems that there are forces at work which keep them togeth...