Contracts and competition: an introduction

Changes in public policy and corporate strategy have enhancedthe role of contracts as mechanisms of economic governance.The understanding that norms, standards and other forms of regulatorymechanism can affect the structure of incentives and the qualityof contractual outcomes has helped to stimulate a wider debateconcerning institutions and economic performance. Among thethemes explored in this Special Issue, which draws on the UKESRC's Contracts and Competition Programme, are the need forinterdisciplinary analysis of economic organisation; the linkbetween contracts and trust; and the complex relationship betweeninstitutional forms and economic outcomes.     

Technical Change, Growth and Trade: New Departures in Institutional Economics

This article analyses the main theoretical and policy issues emerging from the literature on the evolutionary-institutional economics of technical change, the four distinguishing characteristics of which are that technology is often proprietary in nature; only a part of knowledge is codifiable in handbooks, blueprints, patents, and so on; there are fundamental variations in the above two points across different technological fields; and the evolution of knowledge is highly path-dependent.     

Technological globalisation or national systems of innovation?

Technological innovation is said to be breaking down borders. The internet, the explosion of globalised financial markets, the increased foreign direct investment by transnational corporations—all are portrayed as creating a global market in which the nation state is little more than an anachronism. And yet some economies have been more innovative and dynamic than others, and there seems no reason to believe that these differences in national economic performance will become a thing of the past. On the contrary, with a global market, any competitive advantage will bring larger rewards. So government action to enhance firms' competitive advantage becomes more important, not less. It is within this context that technological globalisation is analysed in this paper. The question is whether such globalisation spells the end of the nation state. The answer is no.