In this paper we examine the phenomenon of independent invention in Italy during the liberal age (1861-1913). We make use of a new dataset comprising all patents granted in Italy in five benchmark years: 1864-65, 1881, 1891, 1902 and 1911. We carry out the following exercises. First we examine...

This chapter documents instances from past centuries where inventors freely shared knowledge of their innovations with other inventors. It is widely believed that such knowledge sharing is largely a recent development, as in open source software. Our survey shows, instead, that innovators have...

Using the demand side approach we construct a new set of estimates of per capita agricultural output and per capita GDP for England over the period 1250-1850. Our estimates of per capita GDP suggest that the pattern of long run growth of the English economy can be interpreted with a...

In this paper, we construct a new index that measures the strength of intellectual property (IP) protection for plant varieties for 69 countries over the period 1961-2011. We examine the statistical properties of the index and we compare it with other measures of IP protection. We conclude that...

We revisit the notion of technological trajectories by means of a detailed case-study of the evolution of tank technology between 1915 and 1945. We use principal component analysis to analyze the distribution of technological characteristics and how they map into specific service...

This paper examines the relationship between patents, appropriability strategies and market for technologies in the English brewing industry before 1850. Previous research has pointed to the apparent oddity that large-scale brewing in this period was characterized both by a self-aware culture of...

The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the research on the role played by patent systems in the industrialization process (with a special focus on the British case). Perhaps surprisingly, no consensus has been reached yet as to whether the emergence of modern patent systems exerted a...

We examine the diffusion of steam technology across British counties during the eighteenth century. First, we provide new estimates for the regional variations in the timing, pace and extent of usage of steam engines. Our main data source is an updated version of the list of steam engines...

The aim of this paper is to review the development of steam power technology in the light of the key ideas proposed in General Purpose Technology growth models. We intend to provide a critical evaluation of the interpretive power of such models, which are elaborated around three properties of...

We examine the potentialities of a new indicator for measuring the value of English patents in the period 1617-1841. The indicator is based on the relative visibility of each individual patent in the contemporary technical and legal literature as summarized in Bennet Woodcroft's Reference Index...