LEARNING-BY-PRODUCING AND THE GEOGRAPHIC LINKS BETWEEN INVENTION AND PRODUCTION: EXPERIENCE FROM THE SECOND INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Dhanoos Sutthiphisal

Departmental Working Papers from McGill University, Department of Economics

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of “learning-by-producing” on inventive activity and shows that, in both emerging (electrical equipment and supplies) and maturing (shoes and textiles) industries, the geographic association between invention andproduction was rather weak during the Second Industrial Revolution. Regional shifts in production were neither accompanied nor followed by corresponding increases in invention. Instead, this paper finds that the geographic location of inventive activity tended to mirror the geographic distribution of individuals with advanced technical skills appropriate to the particular industry in question. Even in the craft-based shoe industry, much of the invention came from those with the advanced technical skills. The findings suggest that scholars have over-emphasized the importance of learningby-producing in accounting for the geographic differences in inventive activity, and underestimated the significance of technical skills or human capital amongst the population.

JEL-codes: N0 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2006-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ent and nep-ino
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://home.mcgill.ca/files/economics/learningbyproducingl.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
Journal Article: Learning-by-Producing and the Geographic Links Between Invention and Production: Experience from the Second Industrial Revolution (2006)
Working Paper: Learning-by-Producing and the Geographic Links Between Invention and Production: Experience From the Second Industrial Revolution (2006)
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:mcl:mclwop:2006-18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Departmental Working Papers from McGill University, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Shama Rangwala ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).