Codification, Technology Absorption, and the Globalization of the Industrial Revolution

Réka Juhász, Shogo Sakabe and David Weinstein

No 32667, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper studies technology absorption worldwide in the late nineteenth century. We construct several novel datasets to test the idea that the codification of technical knowledge in the vernacular was necessary for countries to absorb the technologies of the Industrial Revolution. We find that comparative advantage shifted to industries that could benefit from patents in countries and colonies that had access to codified technical knowledge but not in other regions. Using the rapid and unprecedented codification of technical knowledge in Meiji Japan as a natural experiment, we show that this pattern appeared in Japan only after the Japanese government codified vast amounts of technical knowledge. Our findings shed new light on the frictions associated with technology diffusion and offer a novel take on why Meiji Japan was unique among non-Western countries in successfully industrializing during the first wave of globalization.

JEL-codes: F14 F63 N15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gro, nep-his, nep-ino, nep-int and nep-tid
Note: DAE DEV ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32667.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32667

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32667
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().