This paper analyses the association between inter-firm collaborative agreements and the technological capabilities of the largest European electronics firms between 1984 and 1997. To this purpose we collected information about 2,240 R&D agreements sponsored by the EU and 1,970 non sponsored agreements signed by the sample firm. We classified agreements into fourteen industrial sectors by using ...

Introduction Focus: Early (800-1500) commodity money systems (coins) Introduction Stylized facts about evolution of commodity money systems: 1 Started with a single silver coin Initially same size across countries Over time, debased in some countries, not debased in others 2 Next added a second silver coin If original silver coin small, then new silver coin larger If original silver coin large,...

One view, argued by Williams (2000), is that Marx simply made a ‘category mistake’ when he introduced commodity money into his theory of value. If money is fully determined by its social functions in capitalism then the physical characteristics assumed by money become historically contingent so that ‘commodity-money is necessary neither to the logic of Marx’s system nor to the logic of capitali...

We study global properties of the equilibrium set of economies with a continuous consumption space. This framework is important in intertemporal allocation problems (continuous or infinite time), financial markets with uncertainty (continuous states of nature) and commodity differentiation. We show that the equilibrium set is contractible which implies that (i) there is a continuous economic po...