Innovation and Patents in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 2-22
Author(s):  
Petra Moser
Keyword(s):  
Technical Change ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Innovative Activity ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Patent Laws ◽  
Alternative Measures

This chapter summarizes historical evidence on the link between patent laws and innovation. Earlier historical analyses have emphasized the importance of patent laws in encouraging innovation. Data on exhibits at international technology fairs, such as the 1851 Crystal Palace world’s fair, however, indicate that only a small share of innovations are patented and that non-patent mechanisms may play an important role in encouraging innovation. They also show that inventors’ dependency on patents varies strongly across industries, so that radical changes in patent laws may influence the direction, if not the level, of technical change. Exhibition data also indicate that patents may play an important role in facilitating the diffusion of innovative activity by encouraging inventors to advertise their ideas. These results highlight the need for additional analyses of innovation that systematically analyze patents and alternative measures of innovation.

How Do Patent Laws Influence Innovation? Evidence from Nineteenth-Century World's Fairs

2005 ◽  
Vol 95 (4) ◽  
pp. 1214-1236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Moser
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Comparative Advantage ◽  
Technical Change ◽  
Patent Protection ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
Patent Laws ◽  
Small Set

Studies of innovation have focused on the effects of patent laws on the number of innovations, but have ignored effects on the direction of technological change. This paper introduces a new dataset of close to fifteen thousand innovations at the Crystal Palace World's Fair in 1851 and at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 to examine the effects of patent laws on the direction of innovation. The paper tests the following argument: if innovative activity is motivated by expected profits, and if the effectiveness of patent protection varies across industries, then innovation in countries without patent laws should focus on industries where alternative mechanisms to protect intellectual property are effective. Analyses of exhibition data for 12 countries in 1851 and 10 countries in 1876 indicate that inventors in countries without patent laws focused on a small set of industries where patents were less important, while innovation in countries with patent laws appears to be much more diversified. These findings suggest that patents help to determine the direction of technical change and that the adoption of patent laws in countries without such laws may alter existing patterns of comparative advantage across countries.

Factor Income Distribution in the United States During the 1920's: A Reexamination of Fact and Theory

1973 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert R. Keller
Keyword(s):  
Income Distribution ◽  
Technical Change ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Monopoly Power ◽  
Consumption Expenditures ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
Factor Income ◽  
History Of

The traditional economic history of the 1920's emphasizes the importance of changes in the structure of the American economy. It is argued that three structural changes—monopoly power, technical change, and income distribution—tainted the prosperity of the twenties. The main features of this explanation are easily summarized. Rapid advances in technology reduced the costs of producing output. At the same time corporate monopoly power was increasing thereby restricting the tendency for output prices to fall. In the presence of weak labor unions, the interaction of technical change and monopoly power had the result of increasing “profits” relative to “wages.” The shift in the distribution of income not only favored owners of capital but it also created an imbalance between investment and consumption. Consumption expenditures could not keep pace with investment expenditures and this tendency towards underconsumption, in turn, was one reason for the onset of the Great Depression.

Origins of the Gold Coast Cocoa Industry: Example of a Vent-for-Surplus?

Itinerario ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.S. Hogendorn ◽  
M. Goldberg
Keyword(s):  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Historical Evidence

There is an interesting and long-standing controversy over the applicability of the vent-for-surplus model to the growth of the Gold Coast cocoa industry around the turn of the century. This debate has important implications both for African economic history and for current issues of resource allocation in developing countries. Our paper attempts to clarify the elements of the debate by applying to each ele-ment a production-possibilities model, using historical evidence to verify where possible the validity of the analysis.

China's World's Fair of 1910: Lessons from a Forgotten Event

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 503-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael R. Godley
Keyword(s):  
Final Analysis ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
World's Fair ◽  
The Road ◽  
Crystal Palace ◽  
World Fairs ◽  
International Exposition ◽  
The Future

From before the turn of the century, the great powers held large commercial, industrial and technological exhibitions to show off the fruits of progress and to give their citizens a glimpse of where civilization was headed. World fairs thus provided one window into the future. But it must be remembered that such events also constructed monuments to their own era—an age when jingoism and a paradoxical recognition of the shrinking nature of the globe coexisted before the road to war. In the final analysis, the grand exposition, with its curiosity about other peoples and nations and its faith nonetheless that mechanical invention would soon make everyone much the same, was a place where imperialists met in thinly disguised competition. How strange it must seem, then, to learn that the last Chinese dynasty, having just discovered the power of nationalism, attempted an international exposition of its own in the summer of 1910 at the same time that the ‘Festival of Empire Exhibition’ was booked into London's famed Crystal Palace.

scholarly journals Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History

2013 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petra Moser
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Intellectual Property Rights ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Compulsory Licensing ◽  
Patent Pools ◽  
Diffusion Of Knowledge ◽  
Patent Laws ◽  
Over Time

What is the optimal system of intellectual property rights to encourage innovation? Empirical evidence from economic history can help to inform important policy questions that have been difficult to answer with modern data: For example, does the existence of strong patent laws encourage innovation? What proportion of innovations is patented? Is this share constant across industries and over time? How does patenting affect the diffusion of knowledge? How effective are prominent mechanisms, such as patent pools and compulsory licensing, that have been proposed to address problems with the patent system? This essay summarizes results of existing research and highlights promising areas for future research.

Patent Law and Innovation in Europe during the Industrial Revolution

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Alexander Donges ◽  
Felix Selgert
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Patent Law ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Patent Laws ◽  
Capital Access

Abstract Human capital, access to markets, and innovation-friendly institutions were important preconditions for the acceleration of technological change during the industrial revolution. In this context, the recent literature discusses the role of patents. Given their dual nature, patents may have either stimulated innovation through the creation of financial incentives for inventors or they may have hampered innovation, because they created monopolies that restricted the free flow of knowledge. For this reason, the overall effects of patents on innovation and, eventually, long-run economic growth are not clear. In order to develop a better understanding of the determinants of innovation, this special issue of the Economic History Yearbook therefore focuses on the causes and consequences of patent laws and patent law reforms in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in different European countries.

The division of labor in the firm: Agency, near-decomposability and the Babbage principle

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREAS REINSTALLER
Keyword(s):  
Production Process ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Technical Change ◽  
Labor Process ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Technological Search ◽  
The Us ◽  
Organizational Problem ◽  
Development Paths ◽  
The Uk

Abstract:This paper devises a simulation model that combines insights from the evolutionary perspective on the division of labor with ideas from the labor process literature. It characterizes technical change and the development of a near-decomposable production process as the outcome of technological search and of organizational problem solving, where the conflict between workers and firms over the organization of work plays a central role. It is argued that a near-decomposable organization of the production process also allows management to tighten its control over workers. Consequently, more extensive divisions of labor within a firm develop where the power of workers to oppose decisions by the management is low. In these scenarios the performance of firms is also highest. The model is used to interpret historical evidence about different development paths in technical change in the UK and the US at the beginning of the twentieth century.

What Is to Be Explained, and How

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian W. McLean
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Living Standards ◽  
Average Level ◽  
Economic Prosperity ◽  
European Settlement ◽  
Alternative Measures ◽  
Australian History

This chapter sets out the evidence of Australia's economic prosperity, covering the entire era of European settlement, and includes comparisons with the performance of other selected countries. Particular attention is paid to alternative measures of prosperity, their relationships to one another, and their limitations. As a first step toward the explanation of this evidence, the chapter reviews existing suggestions as to what are likely the most important determinants of Australia's levels of productivity and living standards. It also analyzes several literatures of relevance, especially those on Australian history, comparative economic history, and growth economics—both theoretical and empirical. The chapter argues that the determinants of this prosperity are pertinent to any accounting for the variation across time in Australia's average level of income.

scholarly journals Global Economic History as the Accumulation of Capital Through a Process of Combined and Uneven Development: An Appreciation and Critique of Ernest Mandel

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Karl O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Third World ◽  
Uneven Development ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third World

AbstractO'Brien provides a critical assessment of Ernest Mandel's 1975 monograph Late Capitalism. In so doing, he offers a historical narrative that puts into question Mandel's framing of 'waves' of capitalist development as a process of capital accumulation that was dependent upon uneven development in the Third World. O'Brien starts by problematising Mandel's argument that an initial concentration of money, capital and bullion in the hands of Europeans explains combined and uneven development. He goes on to demonstrate that Mandel's (and Lenin's) notion of imperialism as a necessary conduit for the flow of surplus capital from industrialising Europe does not stand up to the historical evidence. In fact, O'Brien maintains an alternative thesis, namely that these marginalised regions were insuffciently penetrated by European capital.

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