Alessandro Nuvolari is Professor of Economic History and Director of the Institute of Economics at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna. He was educated at Bocconi University, Milan, Italy and at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he received a PhD in Economics. He specializes in the economic history of innovation and technical change with a special focus on the Industrial Revolution in England and the industrialization of the Italian Economy. He has also studied the connection between intellectual property rights and inventive activities both in historical and contemporary contexts and he has investigated knowledge sharing and agricultural practices of smallholder farmers in Africa. He is a fellow of the Economic History Programme of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). He has been principal investigator and co-investigator in projects funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the European Commission and the Italian Ministry for Scientific Research. His research papers have been published in a wide range of scholarly journals, including Journal of the European Economic Association, Agronomy for Sustainable Development, Economic History Review, Journal of Economic History, Technology and Culture, Industrial and Corporate Change, Explorations in Economic History, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Business History Review, Research Policy, Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cliometrica, Enterprise and Society.