Along the development path, countries experience large transformations in their economic structure as productive resources move towards different economic activities. ''Modern economic growth'' is also associated with a self-sustained process of technical change which leads to the emergence of...

The diffusion of innovations is supposed to dissipate inventors' rents. Yet in many documented cases, inventors freely shared knowledge with their competitors. Using a model and case studies, this paper explores why sharing did not eliminate inventors' incentives. Each new technology coexisted...

This paper examines the dynamics of technical change in the Italian locomotive industry in the period 1850-1913. From an historical point of view, this industry presents a major point of interest: it was one of the few relatively sophisticated "high-tech" sectors in which Italy, a latecomer...

The distinction between macro- and microinventions is at the core of recent debates on the Industrial Revolution. Yet, the empirical testing of this notion has remained elusive. We address this issue by introducing a new quality indicator for all patents granted in England in the period...

We study the determinants of the spatial distribution of patent inventors at the county level for Great Britain between 1700-1850. Our empirical analysis rests on the localization model by Bottazzi et al. (2007) and on the related estimation procedure by Bottazzi and Gragnolati (2015). Such an...