1 Introduction: firms, technology and globalisation

In this introduction we briefly outline the way in which firms, technology and globalisation have been considered by economists. Thus, in Section 2 we reconsider some aspects of the debate on the way in which economists have considered firms; in Section 3 we review the way in which economists have tackled technology and its change, while in the fourth section we look at globalisation. The fifth section contains the conclusions and illustrates the structure of the volume.