This paper examines how international flows of technological knowledge affect economic performance across industries and firms in different countries. Motivated by the large share of the world's technology investments made by firms that are active across borders, we focus on international trade...

We study 114 years of U.S. stock market data and find That there are large cohort effects in stock prices, effects that we label 'organization capital,' That cohort effects grew at a rate of 1.75% per year, That the debt-equity ratio of all vintages declined, That three big technological waves...

We study the importance of technology and institutions in determining the size of markets in five different countries and fifteen different German states. The setting of 19th century Europe presents a unique opportunity to address this issue, since it witnessed fundamental change in both...

Most industries go through a quot;shakeoutquot; phase during which the number of producers in the industry declines. Industry output generally continues to rise, however, which implies a reallocation of capacity from exiting firms to incumbents and new entrants. Thus shakeouts seem to be classic...

Employing a sample of renowned U.S. inventors that combines biographical detail with information on the patents they received over their careers, we highlight the impact of early U.S. patent institutions in providing broad access to economic opportunity and in encouraging trade in new...

I discuss the concept and empirical importance of international technology diffusion from the point of view of recent work on endogenous technological change. In this literature, technology is viewed as technological knowledge. I first review the major concepts, and how international technology...

The growth of the U.S. economy over the nineteenth century was characterized by a sharp acceleration in the rate of inventive activity and a dramatic rise in the relative importance of highly specialized inventors as generators of new technological knowledge. Relying on evidence compiled from...

Electricity and Information Technology (IT) are perhaps the two most important general purpose technologies (GPTs) to date. We analyze how the U.S. economy reacted to them. The Electricity and IT eras are similar, but also differ in several important ways. Electrification was more broadly...

Recent scholarly literature explains the spread of in-house research labs during the early 20th century by pointing to the information problems involved in contracting for technology. We argue that these difficulties have been overemphasized and that in fact a substantial trade in patented...

Scholars have attempted to explain geographic clustering in inventive activity by arguing that it is connected with clustering in production or new investment. They have offered three possible reasons for this link: because invention occurs as a result of learning by doing; because new...