Does brick size matter? Albert G. Keller on another QWERTY story

Luca Fiorito and Massimiliano Vatiero

Economics Letters, 2023, vol. 223, issue C

Abstract: In his seminal “Clio and the Economics of Qwerty”, Paul David indicates Thorstein Veblen’s famous discussion of the British system of coal rail haulage as an intellectual antecedent to the idea of lock in. This note documents how Albert G. Keller, a Yale sociologist contemporary of Veblen, had presented a similar argument in connection to the establishment of a brick tax in England and its effects on the size of bricks. Like Veblen, Keller used this illustration to emphasize the inertia exercised by certain institutional conditions.

Keywords: QWERTY keyboard; Institutional lag; Lock in (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B15 D01 H30 N60 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176522004487
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolet:v:223:y:2023:i:c:s0165176522004487

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2022.110974

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().