Giovanni Dosi

This work studies the properties of a coordination game in which agents repeatedly compete to be in the population minority. The game reflects some essential features of those economic situations in which positive rewards are assigned to individuals who behave in opposition to the modal behavior in a population. Here we model a group of heterogeneous agents who adaptively learn

According to the advocates of a "Generalized Darwinism" (GD), the three core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and retention (or inheritance) can be used as a general framework for the development of theories explaining evolutionary processes in the socio­economic domain. Even though these are originally biological terms, GD argues that they can be re-defined in such a way as to abstract from biological particulars. We argue that this approach does not only risk to misguide positive theory development, but that it may also impede the construction of a coherent evolutionary approach to "policy implications". This is shown with respect to the positive, instrumental and normative theories such an approach is supposed to be based upon.

An alternative to the typical application of rational choice models to climate policy is the coupling of agent-based modeling and exploratory approaches. Agent-based models (ABMs) represent the world as made up of heterogeneous, boundedly-rational agents who act in their own interests and yet engage in substantive communication. Rather than focusing on optimal outcomes, agent-based models are primarily concerned with the evolution of large-scale properties that 'emerge' from the lower-level behavior. Consequently, ABMs have the potential to address complex system properties and generate a wider array of plausible storylines than more traditional integrated assessment modeling methodologies. We provide an overview of a new agent-based model of economic growth, energy technology, and climate change, and demonstrate use of the model for scenario discovery. Scenario discovery generates ensembles of plausible futures under alternative assumptions and hypotheses concerning system ...

... University. Giovanni Dosi. Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa. Daniel Levinthal. Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. We are pleased to publish the following paper by Sidney G. Winter. The paper was for many years hidden in the dusty archives at the RAND ...

This paper discusses, first, the properties of scientific and technological knowledge and the institutions supporting its generation and its economic applications. The evidence supports the broad interpretation that we call the ‘Stanford–Yale–Sussex’ synthesis. Second, such patterns yield important implications with respect to the so-called ‘European Paradox’, i.e. the conjecture that EU countries play a leading global role in terms of top-level scientific output, but lag behind in the ability of converting this strength into wealth-generating innovations. Some descriptive evidence shows that, contrary to the ‘paradox’ conjecture, Europe's weaknesses reside both in its system of scientific research and in a relatively weak industry. The final part of the paper identifies a few normative implications: much less emphasis should be put on various types of ‘networking’, and much more on policy measures aimed at strengthening both frontier research and European corporate actors.

The paper analyzes some generic features of industrial dynamics whereby innovative change is carried, stochastically, by new entrants. Relying on the formal representation suggested in Winter et al. (1997), it studies both the asymptotic properties of such processes and their finite dynamics to account for a few empirical stylized facts, including persistent entry and exit, skewed size distributions and turbulence

... Honeywell Italia; Giancarlo Cainarca, MG Colombo and Sergio Mariotti, Politecnico, Milan, who kindly ... ments in information technologies by "supplier dominated" industries such as textile (on the Be ... the elements of continuity with the preelectronics period of technical change are ...

4 Rational entrepreneurs or optimistic martyrs? Some considerations on technological regimes, corporate entries, and the evolutionary role of decision biases Giovanni Dosi and Dan Lovallo I. Introduction This is a rather conjectural report on the evolutionary role of ...

ABSTRACT The paper presents a new framework to assess firm level heterogeneity and to study the rate and direction of technical change. Building on the analysis of revealed short-run production functions by Hildenbrand (1981), we propose the (normalized) volume of the zonotope composed by vectors-firms in a narrowly defined industry as an indicator of inter-firm heterogeneity. Moreover, the angles that the main diagonal of the zonotope form with the axes provide a measure of the rates and directions of technical change over time. The proposed framework can easily account for n-inputs and m-outputs and, crucially, the measures of heterogeneity and technical change do not require many of the standard assumptions from production theory.