Microelectronics,long waves and world structural change: New perspectives for developing countries

This article assesses the way in which emerging new technologies could enhance development prospects. To do this, it first presents a long-term view of the relationship between the techno-economic sphere and the socio-institutional framework, defining the present period as one of transition and structural change. It then outlines the main characteristics of the technological revolution based on microelectronics. It finally argues that these characteristics will offer a completely new range of opportunities for reshaping development strategies.     

Profiling tourists based on their perceptions of the trustworthiness of different types of peer-to-peer applications

This research profiles tourists based on the extent to which they trust user-generated content (UGC) uploaded in different types of peer-to-peer applications, also considering their socio-demographic characteristics, frequency of travel and motivations for using the Internet and UGC when making their travel choices. For this purpose, latent class segmentation was applied on a sample of 609 Italian tourists and three different clusters were identified, namely: “distrustful tourists”, “untrusted tourists” and “social web tourists”. The findings suggest that hospitality marketers should improve their social media strategy by focusing their attention on Travel 2.0 applications according to the socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics of their target market.     

Structural change and assimilation of new technologies in the economic and social systems

Through generating a set of hypotheses about the inter-relationship between diffusion of new technologies and economic development, the author seeks to identify the causal mechanisms of the depressions in the trough of the Kondratiev long wave. A model of the capitalist economy and an analysis of its structural patterns and processes are proposed, and from an examination of the technoeconomic and socio-institutional characteristics of the fourth Kondratiev, some institutional requirements for the next upswing are elaborated.