TY  - JOUR
AU  - Lamoreaux,Naomi R.
AU  - Sokoloff,Kenneth L.
TI  - Inventive Activity and the Market for Technology in the United States,  1840-1920
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7107
PY  - 1999
Y2  - May 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7107
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7107.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Naomi R. Lamoreaux
Department of Economics
Yale University
27 Hillhouse Ave., Rm. 39
Box 208269
New Haven, CT 06520-8269
Tel: 203-432-3625
Fax: 203-432-3635
E-Mail: naomi.lamoreaux@yale.edu

Kenneth L. Sokoloff
Department of Economics
UCLA
405 Hilgard Avenue
Los Angeles, CA  90095-1477
Tel: 310/825-4249
Fax: 310/825-9528
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased
AB  - The growth of the U.S. economy over the nineteenth century was characterized by a sharp acceleration in the rate of inventive activity and a dramatic rise in the relative importance of highly specialized inventors as generators of new technological knowledge. Relying on evidence compiled from patent records, we argue that the evolution of a market for technology played a central role in these developments. Across both individuals and geographic areas, the expansion of opportunities to trade in patent rights was closely associated with increases in specialization at invention, as well as advances in rates of invention more generally. The patent system is often celebrated for the stimulus to invention provided by granting limited monopoly rights to inventors for the use of their discoveries, but its specification of tradable assets in technology has also been important.
ER  -