Were ordinary factory workers unskilled and was technology "de-skilling" during the Industrial Revolution? I measure foregone output to estimate the human capital investments in mule spinners and power loom tenders in ante-bellum Lowell. These investments rivaled those of craft apprentices,...

The Federal Circuit’s expansion of patentable subject matter in the 1990s led to a threefold increase in software patents, many of which contain abstract ideas merely tethered to a general-purpose computer. There is little evidence, however, to suggest this expansion has produced an increase...

Do firms displace labor with new information technologies such as “artificial intelligence”? It is challenging to distinguish the effects of technology adoption from unobserved productivity and demand shocks. We take a first look at the economic impacts of large custom software investment...

This paper investigates basic relationships between technology and occupations. Building a general occupational model, I look at detailed occupations since 1980 to explore whether computers are related to job losses or other sources of wage inequality. Occupations that use computers grow faster,...

When innovation is cumulative, early patentees hold claims against later innovators. Then potential hold-up may cause prospective second stage innovators to forego investing in R&D. It is sometimes argued that ex ante licensing (before R&D) avoids hold-up. This paper explores ex ante licensing...

Economists disagree how much technology raises demand for workers with pre-existing skills. But technology might affect wages another way: through skills learned on the job. Using instrumental variables on 9 panels of workers from 1989 to 2013, this paper estimates that workers who use...

The emergence of nonpracticing entities (NPEs) — firms that purchase and hold patent rights but neither innovate themselves nor use the patents in the production of goods — is supposed to incentivize innovation by providing a ready market for innovators. We test this idea empirically and...

In the past, non-practicing entities (NPEs) - firms that license patents without producing goods - have facilitated technology markets and increased rents for small inventors. Is this also true for today's NPEs? Or are they “patent trolls” who opportunistically litigate over software patents...

This chapter documents instances from past centuries where inventors freely shared knowledge of their innovations with other inventors. It is widely believed that such knowledge sharing is a recent development, as in Open Source Software. Our survey shows, instead, that innovators have long...

On the heels of a widely reported uptick in egregious patent enforcement, six patent reform bills have been introduced in the last six months. All six bills aim to curb nuisance-value patent litigation, a phenomenon popularly referred to as “patent trolling,” by reducing the cost of...