There is a widespread idea that corporations have completely taken over invention and innovation processes throughout the twentieth century, thus becoming the main users of patent systems. However, recent studies suggest that, in spite of corporate expansion, independent invention is still...

In this paper, we reflect on the links between the origin and rate of foreign direct investments (FDI) and the granting of intellectual property rights (IPRs) to foreigners in Spain during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Our main hypothesis is that the two issues were...

From a long-term perspective, technological innovation could have come from local or domestic inventive and research activity, or from the transfer of foreign technology. In reality either option produces similar effects and often it was a combination of both which drove the historical...

In this paper we will explore how international corporations used the Spanish patent system in the late nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century in order to discover what the actual effects of its apparent weakness were. The origins and evolution of corporate patenting...

Asistimos en la actualidad a la finalización del proceso de liberalización del sector eléctrico que se inició a finales del siglo XX. Durante más de cincuenta años esta actividad estuvo fuertemente regulada, pero no siempre fue así. El retorno a un mercado de libre competencia y...

If we compare the Castilian fiscal system with English, French or Dutch, two basic differences are apparent: in one hand, in England, France and Holland the fiscal system was a mixture of indirect taxes and direct taxes and in the other hand, the financial revolution had been carried out in the...

This paper studies the origins of trademark registration in Spain and offers, for the first time, data across sectors and regions with a long-term perspective. In apparent contradiction to the slow path of industrialization and the economic backwardness of Spain between 1850 and the 1940s,...

We discuss the effects that the emergence of the new post-industrial form of flexible capitalist organization has on the Spanish labor market and, by extension, on the working life of two representative groups of employees characterized by their casual and stable working conditions. This brings...