Exploring the Impact of Government Regulation on Technological Transitions; a Historical Perspective on Innovation in the Dutch Network-Based Industries

Helen Stout and Martin de Jong
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Helen Stout: Erasmus School of Law; Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Martin de Jong: Erasmus School of Law; Erasmus University Rotterdam, Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, 3062 Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Laws, 2020, vol. 9, issue 2, 1-21

Abstract: Government interventions can affect processes of technological transition through the enactment of legal and other policy instruments. In this contribution, we concentrated on legal interventions only and examined what they were, the relation between the public and private players that they affected, and the nature of the incentive they provided. We did this for four historical cases in the world of utility industries in the Netherlands in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The summarizing results for each case appeared in overview tables which eventually showed whether most of the administered stimuli were negative, neutral, or positive for the action alternatives of the innovating players, and thus the further development of the newly emerging technology. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the common argument and rhetoric that governments normally aim to propel industrial progress by opening a variety of options for innovating private players rings hollow when analyzed more systematically. A higher number of the incentives we found across the four cases were negative rather than positive, while some cases had only negative incentives and none had more positive than negative incentives.

Keywords: network-based industries; technological transitions; legal incentives; qualitative game theory; behavioral tactics; innovators (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D78 E61 E62 F13 F42 F68 K0 K1 K2 K3 K4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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