British-French Technology Transfer from the Revolution to Louis Philippe (1791-1844): Evidence from Patent Data

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna; University of Siena
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050723000232
• 发表日期: 2023
• 页码: 833-873
• 关键词: economic-growth; UNITED-STATES; INNOVATION; entrepreneurship; industrialization; invention; britain; france

摘要

This paper examines the patterns of technology transfer from Britain to France during the early phases of industrializing using a dataset comprising all patents granted in France in the period 1791-1844. Exploiting the peculiarities of French legislation, we construct an array of patent quality indicators and investigate their determinants. We find that patents filed by British inventors or French inventors with personal connections to British inventors were of relatively higher quality. Overall, our results show that the French innovation system was capable of attracting and effectively absorbing key technologies from Britain.