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.

scholarly journals Price Bargaining Without Supply Control

1995 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry W. Kinnucan
Keyword(s):  
Free Riding ◽  
Price Increase ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Empirical Application ◽  
Supply Response ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Agricultural Price

Primary food producers are permitted to bargain as a group for higher prices. Supply response, however, is critical to the long-run success of producer cartels. This article presents a model that elucidates that role of supply response in agricultural price bargaining when no overt action is taken to limit quantity and participation in the cartel is voluntary. Free-riding, for example, is seen as having a dual nature: it undermines the cartel's influence at the negotiating table but it enhances the cartel's ability to sustain a negotiated price increase by attenuating supply response. That price bargaining can result in significant transfers from processors to producers when demand is inelastic and supply is uncontrolled is highlighted in the empirical application.

Technological Inertia in Economic History

1992 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 325-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Mokyr
Keyword(s):  
Social Environment ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Technological Progress ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Central Element ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Vested Interests

Technological progress depends for its success on a conducive social environment. The resistance to innovation is identified as a central element governing the success of new inventions. Such resistance usually takes the form of non-market processes. It consists of vested interests, whose assets are jeopardized by new techniques, as well as by intellectuals who are opposed to new technology on principle. The role of resistance in the British and French economies during the Industrial Revolution is assessed.

Conceptualizing the Cost of COVID Policy: The Role of Institutional Trade-Offs

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Geloso
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Health Interventions ◽  
Public Health Interventions ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Institutional Trade ◽  
The Cost

Abstract In this short article, I summarize recent research in economic history that suggests long-run institutional trade-offs in public health that affect both health and economic outcomes. These trade-offs suggest that a long timespan is necessary to fully measure the consequences of heavy-handed public health interventions. This timespan means that those who have declared “victory” or “defeat” in the wake of COVID policy are premature. Modesty in terms of policy evaluation and prescription is still warranted.

Personal Capitalism and British Industrial Decline: The Personally Managed Firm and Business Strategy in Sheffield, 1880–1920

1994 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 364-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Lloyd-Jones ◽  
Myrddin J. Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Business Strategy ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Business Success ◽  
Flexible Technology ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Industrial Decline ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Quality Production

Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., has maintained that the persistence of the personally managed firm in Britain may be a cause of that nation's long-run industrial decline. This article contributes to the debate over decline through a detailed exploration of the business role of personally managed firms in a strategic sector of the Second Industrial Revolution: the metal and metal-making trades of Sheffield. Our study shows that the business strategies of Sheffield firms, based on quality production and flexible technology, had close similarities to those of American companies described by scholars such as Philip Scranton. Many of the Sheffield firms were not lacking in enterprise; they demonstrated tenacity and, in certain key segments of the metal trades, enjoyed a high degree of business success. Our examination of personal capitalism in Sheffield suggests that the terms of the debate over Britain's industrial decline may require further refinement.

Industrialization and Sport

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wray Vamplew
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Sports Facilities ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Spectator Sport ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Female Employees ◽  
Equipment Manufacture

This chapter considers three main aspects of sport and industrialization. First, it challenges the conventional wisdom that the British Industrial Revolution was the catalyst for the development of modern sport in Britain and that subsequently Britain’s industrialization led to the cultural export of sport to the rest of the world. In doing so it critiques Guttmann’s theory of modernization in sport; unravels the various influences of industrialization, urbanization, and commercialization; and notes several different models of sport development that emerged around the world. Second, it examines the economic history of sport becoming an industry itself, looking at equipment manufacture, gate-money spectator sport, the role of the professional player, and the various objectives of the entrepreneurs involved. Finally, it considers sport in the industrial workplace, particularly the motives of employers who provided sports facilities for their workers. It emphasizes that sport was often offered to both male and female employees.

US Fertility Rates and Childbearing in American Economic History, 1800–2010

2018 ◽  
pp. 74-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha J. Bailey ◽  
Brad J. Hershbein
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Child Survival ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
The Past ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Women's Wages ◽  
Race Ethnicity

Over the past two centuries, the United States has witnessed dramatic changes in fertility rates and childbearing. This chapter describes shifts in childbearing and family size from 1800 to 2010 and describes the role of different factors in this evolution. Demand factors such as industrialization, urbanization, rising family incomes, public health improvements, and the growth in women’s wages generally reduced the benefits and raised the costs of having many children. Supply factors such as increases in infant and child survival and improvements in the technology of contraception and abortion have also altered parents’ decisions about their childbearing. This chapter summarizes the long-run trends in US fertility rates and completed childbearing, both overall and by mothers’ race/ethnicity and geography. Next, it evaluates evidence on the determinants of childbearing, including both economic and demographic explanations for these patterns. A final section weighs the evidence supporting the existence of two fertility transitions.

Capital, Income Growth, in American Economic History

2018 ◽  
pp. 374-400
Author(s):  
Paul W. Rhode
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Income Growth ◽  
Standard View ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
Return On Capital ◽  
Output Ratio ◽  
The Interest Rate

The role of capital accumulation in the process of long-run income growth has been the subject of great debate. The classical and early neoclassical economists viewed capital accumulation as the fundamental driver of growth. Economists informed by the Solow growth model (and its successors) and by twentieth-century growth accounting exercises assign capital accumulation a much more marginal role. This now standard view takes certain constancies for granted: the rate of capital formation (i.e., the saving rate), the capital-output ratio, capital’s share of income, and the rate of return on capital (i.e., the interest rate). This chapter documents the historical evolution of capital in the American economy and challenges the conventional thinking. It shows that the role of capital accumulation in economic growth is dynamic and has changed dramatically over the past three centuries.

European Industry 1700-1870

2008 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Broadberry ◽  
Rainer Fremdling ◽  
Peter M. Solar
Keyword(s):  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Economic History ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Gradual Process ◽  
European Industry ◽  
Path Dependent

AbstractThis paper offers an overview of the development of European industry between 1700 and 1870, drawing in particular on the recent literature that has emerged following the formation of the European Historical Economics Society in 1991. The approach thus makes use of economic analysis and quantitative methods where appropriate. There are a number of important revisions, compared with previous accounts of Europe’s Industrial Revolution, particularly as embodied in the major existing textbooks on European economic history. First, the Industrial Revolution now emerges as a more gradual process than was once implied by the use of the take-off metaphor. Nevertheless, the scale of the structural transformation that occurred during the process of industrialisation continues to justify the use of the term Industrial Revolution. Second, although the emphasis on the central role of technological change is not new, we use economic analysis to shed new light on the process. Drawing on a model of technological choice first introduced by Paul David, we emphasise the importance of factor prices for the initial switch to modern capital intensive production methods in Britain, the rate of diffusion of these methods to other countries and path dependent technological change. In the cotton industry, particular emphasis is placed on the role of high wages, while in the iron industry, the price of coal is seen to play an important part. We also draw on the idea of a General Purpose Technology to evaluate the role of steam power.

The Role of Energy in Twentieth-Century Economic Growth

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malanima Paolo ◽  
Astrid Kander ◽  
Paul Warde
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Energy Intensity ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Shared Experience ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Catch Up ◽  
Third Industrial Revolution ◽  
Twentieth Century Europe

This chapter examines the role of energy in the economic growth of twentieth-century Europe. It considers the interrelationships of factors of production in order to identify the general features of a shared experience of growth, rather than to illuminate the local differences. The chapter first explains how development blocks contributed to GDP growth before discussing seven long-run propositions, including the strong growth of capital stock and catch-up with the leader of capital–GDP ratios; machinery increased more than GDP, labor, and other capital; and falling and converging energy intensity in the twentieth century. The chapter concludes with an overview of the link between energy intensity and economic structure. It argues that it was the third industrial revolution that was behind most of the increasing economic efficiency of energy consumption after the 1970s.

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