The Location of Invention and Technical Change: Industrial Development in the U.S., 1870 - 1929

发明和技术变革的地点：1870 - 1929 年美国的工业发展

• 批准号: 9510974
• 负责人: Kenneth Sokoloff
• 金额: $ 20.21万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1995
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1995-11-01 至 1998-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9510974&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Location; Invention; Technical; Change; Industrial

The purpose of this project is to expand the knowledge of the sources of technological change by examining patterns in the location of invention in the U.S. manufacturing sector between 1870 and 1929, a period of integration of national product markets as well as of radical change in technology and industrial structure. Location will be analyzed in two different senses. The first is geographical. Despite the frequent references to cases such as machinery in nineteenth-century New England and semi-conductors and computers in today's Silicon Valley, the geographic clustering of inventive activity has received little in the way of systematic investigation. The core issues are: whether such centers of invention have been common and persistent and what conditions or behaviors gave rise to them if they were; whether there were local externalities in invention, and if so, whether they pertained only to a certain class of industries or a certain stage in an industry's development; whether geographic clustering in production has been systematically associated with geographic clustering in invention; and whether firms located in production clusters have been systematically associated with geographic clustering in invention; and whether firms located in production clusters have manifested higher rates of productivity than those that were more isolated. The second aspect of the locational question is organizational. It is conventional to think of invention as an activity that occurs within the bounds of firms, but at various times in various industries firms have bought or licensed much of their technology from outside suppliers, and inventors in turn have chosen to extract their returns by selling off or licensing their inventions. A goal of this project is to measure the extent of this market for technology and to explore how it widened and deepened over time, how its mechanisms of exchange evolved, and the nature of the institutions that mediated between inventors and those interested in developing and commercializing new technologies. Another goal is to understand changes in the extent to which inventive activity was located within the firms that used the technology. Finally, the interaction of the organizational factors and geographical clustering of invention will be analyzed.

该项目的目的是通过研究1870年至1929年之间在美国制造业的发明地点的模式来扩展对技术变革的来源的知识，这是国家产品市场以及技术和工业结构的根本变化的整合时期。 位置将以两种不同的感觉进行分析。 第一个是地理。 尽管经常提到诸如19世纪新英格兰的机械以及当今硅谷中的半导体和计算机的案例，但发明活动的地理聚集在系统研究的方式上几乎没有得到。 核心问题是：这样的发明中心是否普遍且持久，以及如果它们是什么条件或行为产生了什么条件或行为； 无论是发明的当地外部性，如果是的话，它们是否仅与某些类别的行业或行业发展中的某个阶段有关；生产中的地理聚类是否与发明的地理聚类有系统地相关。以及生产集群中的公司是否与发明中的地理聚类有着系统的关联；以及生产集群中的公司是否比更孤立的公司表现出更高的生产率。 位置问题的第二个方面是组织。 通常，将发明视为在公司范围内发生的一种活动，但是在各个行业中，公司都从外部供应商那里购买或许可了许多技术，而发明人则选择通过出售或许可其发明来提取回报。 该项目的一个目的是衡量该市场的技术程度，并探索它随着时间的推移如何扩大和加深，其交换机制如何发展的方式以及在发明家与有兴趣开发和商业化新技术感兴趣的机构的性质。 另一个目标是了解使用该技术的公司内的发明活动的变化。 最后，将分析组织因素和发明的地理聚类的相互作用。