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...

Ascertaining whether patents encourage invention necessitates understanding the incentives inventors respond to. The British patent system prior to its reform in 1852 was cumbersome and expensive. Whether it facilitated or delayed the Industrial Revolution is hotly debated. This paper's...

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...

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...

Ascertaining whether patents encourage invention necessitates understanding the incentives inventors respond to. The British patent system prior to its reform in 1852 was cumbersome and expensive. Whether it facilitated or delayed the Industrial Revolution is hotly debated. This paper's...

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...