for their valuable comments. All remaining mistakes are ours. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013 under grant agreement n 290647.

This paper examines how product relatedness and the breadth of technological search affect the path-dependent development of export specializations across countries documented in prior research. The results of the econometric analysis in this paper show that broader technological search in an industry has a positive impact on the development of comparative advantages in the product lines it exports. The interplay between product relatedness and the scope of technological search has a two-edged character. On the one hand, broader technological search supports adjustments and consolidations of the export baskets on the extensive margin. This contributes to weaken path-dependency. On the other hand, it fosters the competitiveness of products that are related to current export specializations, and thereby promotes path-dependency on the intensive margin of trade. These results differ across countries with different levels of technological capabilities.

This paper examines whether PageRank algorithms are a valid instrument for the analysis of technical progress in specific technological fields by means of patent citation data. It provides evidence for patent data in biotechnology. Recent literature has been critical with regard to the use of PageRank for the analysis of scientific citation networks. The results reported in this paper indicate, however, that with some minor adaptations and careful interpretation of the results the algorithm can be used to capture some important stylised facts of technical progress and the importance of single patents relatively well especially if compared to indicators based on direct inward citations only. The results reported in this paper indicate, however, that with some minor adaptations and careful interpretation of the results the algorithm can be used to capture some important stylised facts of technical progress and the importance of single patents relatively well especially if compared to indicators based on direct inward citations only.

Background: Lower socioeconomic status is associated with poor health and more intensive healthcare system use. Less is known about the implications of socioeconomic disparities for healthcare costs in a cumulative perspective over the life course, accounting for the social gradients in longevity. We apply a dynamic microsimulation model to investigate socioeconomic differences in lifetime costs for healthcare services in Austria.Methods: We use education as an indicator of socioeconomic status. Information on healthcare consumption from the Austrian Health Interview Survey is combined with price weights for healthcare services to calculate average cost profiles by gender, age, and education consistent with aggregate System of Health Accounts. Dynamic microsimulation is used to project healthcare costs. We present lifetime costs estimated for the 2019 birth cohort, disentangling the impact of healthcare use and longevity by gender and education. Total system costs are projected in various scenarios.Results: We find a strong socioeconomic gradient in healthcare use and healthcare expenditure over the life course, which is more pronounced for men. Before considering social inequalities in mortality, men with compulsory education have close to 66% higher lifetime costs than men with tertiary education; for women, the difference is close to 20%. Accounting for longevity differentials reduces this gap to about 40% for men and 10% for women.Conclusions: Moving from a cross-sectional to a life course perspective is important to understand the distributional implications of healthcare system use. Microsimulation can identify the individual contribution of the various factors affecting future health system costs.