Information structure and coordination in technology policy

The main purpose of our paper is to present a model which allows a comparison of different types of technology policies to be made. It appears that there is a kind of model which is appropriate to that purpose but which belongs to the theory of the firm. Indeed, one of the characteristics of technology policies is the degree of centralization of decision; as it is in the design of firm organization. It seems that a model like AOKI's (1986) presents sufficient properties to be used in our context. The aim of this exercise is to compare vertical and horizontal institutional frameworks for technology policies, more precisely diffusion and mission oriented policies. This framework will be applied to the case of some technology policies in the Federal Republic of Germany (before re-unification): programmes in production technologies and the Transrapid programme.Financial support by the E. C. for the SPES-project Comparative Economics of R & D: the case of France and Germany is gratefully acknowledged. We would like to thank all participants to the SPES-project (involving the Universities of Ausburg and Tübingen, the IFO Institute Munich, the CNRS teams LATAPSES in Nice and BETA in Strasbourg and the Ecole Centrale Paris) for helpful comments. We also profited from comments by A. Arundel, R. Cowan, P. A. David, C. Freeman and L. Soete, and by two anonymous referees. An initial version of this paper is published as Foray and Llerena, 1992.