Innovation Networks in the Industrial Revolution

Lukas Rosenberger, W Hanlon and Carl Hallmann

No 11299, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: How did Britain sustain faster rates of economic growth than comparable European countries, such as France, during the Industrial Revolution? We argue that Britain possessed an important but underappreciated innovation advantage: British inventors worked in technologies that were more central within the innovation network. We offer a new approach for measuring the innovation network using patent data from Britain and France in the late-18th and early-19th century. We show that the network influenced innovation outcomes and demonstrate that British inventors worked in more central technologies within the innovation network than French inventors. Drawing on recently developed theoretical tools, and using a novel estimation strategy, we quantify the implications for technology growth rates in Britain compared to France. Our results indicate that the shape of the innovation network, and the location of British inventors within it, explains an important share of the more rapid technological change and industrial growth in Britain during the Industrial Revolution.

Keywords: industrial revolution; innovation network; patents; economic growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-gro, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-net, nep-tid and nep-ure
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Working Paper: Innovation Networks in the Industrial Revolution (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11299

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