We sketch a new synthesis of American business history to replace (and subsume) that put forward by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., most famously in his book The Visible Hand (1977). We see the broader subject as the history of the institutions of coordination in the economy, with the management of...

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...

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...

The standard view of U.S. technological history is that the locus of invention shifted during the early twentieth century to large firms whose in-house research laboratories were superior sites for advancing the complex technologies of the second industrial revolution. In recent years this view...

Although technological change is vital for economic growth, the interaction of finance and technological innovation is rarely studied. This pioneering volume examines the ways in which innovation is funded in the United States. In case studies and theoretical discussions, leading economists and...

Although technological change is vital for economic growth, the interaction of finance and technological innovation is rarely studied. This pioneering volume examines the ways in which innovation is funded in the United States. In case studies and theoretical discussions, leading economists and...