Why was Schumpeter not more concerned with patents ?

Rémy Guichardaz () and Julien Pénin ()
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Rémy Guichardaz: BETA - Bureau d'Économie Théorique et Appliquée - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - UNISTRA - Université de Strasbourg - UL - Université de Lorraine - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Although Schumpeter is widely acknowledged as a pioneer of the economic analysis of innovation and although the patent system occupies an important place today in this field of research, Schumpeter did not see patents as playing a key role for fostering innovation. He mentioned them only a couple of times, in passing, and never developed any scientific analysis of the patent system. In this paper, we propose an explanation of this blind spot based on three characteristics of Schumpeter's thought: first, entrepreneurs are largely motivated by non-monetary elements; second, they enjoy a first-mover advantage because imitation is difficult; third, Schumpeter viewed the innovation process as a relentless race in which firms are doomed to innovate in order to avoid disappearing. The Schumpeterian view of the economic process therefore largely reduces the economic importance of patents.

Keywords: Patents; Joseph Aloïs Schumpeter; innovation; incentives; creative destruction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hpe, nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-sbm
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02437831v1
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Published in Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 2019, 29 (4), pp.1361-1369. ⟨10.1007/s00191-019-00643-w⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02437831

DOI: 10.1007/s00191-019-00643-w

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