State Capacity and American Technology: Evidence from the Nineteenth Century

Daron Acemoglu, Jacob Moscona and James Robinson

American Economic Review, 2016, vol. 106, issue 5, 61-67

Abstract: Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Economic Growth compellingly shows how technical innovation, stimulated by the country's institutions, has radically improved the living standards of the citizens of the US. We conduct an empirical investigation of the impact of the capacity of the US state, as proxied by the presence of post offices, on innovation. We show that there is a strong association between the number of post offices in a county and patenting activity. Our evidence suggests that part of story of US innovation is the capacity and reach of the US state.

JEL-codes: E23 E65 I31 N11 N12 O33 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161071
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (77)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20161071 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/aer/ds/10605/P2016_1071_ds.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aecrev:v:106:y:2016:i:5:p:61-67

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().