Inequality as a brake on technological progress, productivity and growth

This thesis contains an analysis regarding the relationship between inequality and innovation. In particular, the objective is to understand how technological progress is influenced by inequality. Indeed, the quantitative section consists of describing the evolution of Italian annual and weekly earnings inequality from 1994 to 2014 and tries to develop some regressions by different economic sectors in order to study the effects of wage inequality on the degree of innovation of firms. Conversely, the qualitative part of the dissertation is focused on the development of inequality and technology over time and the main theories regarding the causes of growth of inequality and the features of the decrease of rate of innovation as a consequence of the inequality itself. In summary, low cooperation and high wage disparities seem to reduce the level of productivity and innovation in a firm. Furthermore, the social composition of a country influences the market supply side: this happens both through the domestic demand for innovation and thanks to the political pressure on the institutions that deal with the management of the distribution of patents.