Patent studies inform our understanding of innovation. Any study of patenting involves classifying patent data according to a chosen taxonomy. The literature has produced numerous taxonomies, which means patents are being classified differently across studies. This potential inconsistency is...

Did the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars contribute to the Industrial Revolution? Recent scholarship argues warfare was an important factor in explaining Britain's industrialisation, by encouraging the invention and diffusion of key technologies with military applications. I re-examine...

Did the outbreak of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars influence technical change during the Industrial Revolution? We address this question by investigating an instance of state intervention into the market for inventions from 1793-1820: the introduction of a new proviso into British...