I owe many people debts of gratitude for their help in the development of this book. Certain parts of this book were written and published in various forms while I was at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin in 1982–1990 and Université catholique de Louvain in 1990–1997. I benefited greatly from the research opportunities and the intellectual environment that these institutions provided. I am particularly indebted to Paul Geroski, Alexis Jacquemin, Dennis Mueller, Hiroyuki Odagiri, F. M. Scherer, and Leonard Weiss for their criticisms and suggestions on various papers that are now integrated in this book. I thank David Audretsch, Manfred Fleischer, Elizabeth de Ghellinck, Christian Huveneers, Joachim Schwalbach, and Leo Sleuwaegen for their advice and encouragement.

José de la Torre, Marvin Lieberman, and Mariko Sakakibara at UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management offered many insights and useful comments on certain parts of this book. I thank my colleagues at the Peter Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University for their moral support and encouragement.

Over the years, I have had many opportunities to present the material in this book in various forms at seminars and conferences. I extend my thanks to Nicola Acocella, Luca Barbarito, Jean-François Hennart, Fukunari Kimura, Bruce Kogut, Franco Malerba, Jean-Louis Mucchielli, Yoko Sazanami, and Klaus Zimmermann for such opportunities and their valuable comments.