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

该项目的目的是通过研究1870年至1929年期间美国制造业的发明地点模式来扩大技术变革来源的知识，这是一个国家产品市场一体化以及技术和产业结构发生根本变化的时期。 将从两个不同的意义上分析位置。 第一个是地理。 尽管人们经常提到19世纪新英格兰的机械和今天硅谷的半导体和计算机等案例，但发明活动的地理集群却很少得到系统的研究。 核心问题是：这些发明中心是否普遍和持久，如果是，是什么条件或行为导致了它们的产生;发明中是否存在地方外部性，如果存在，它们是否只涉及某一类产业或产业发展的某个阶段;生产的地理聚集是否与发明的地理聚集有系统的联系;以及位于生产集群中的企业是否与发明中的地理集群有系统的联系;以及位于生产集群中的企业是否比那些更孤立的企业表现出更高的生产率。 选址问题的第二个方面是组织问题。 传统上认为发明是在公司范围内发生的活动，但在不同的时期，在不同的行业中，公司从外部供应商购买或许可了他们的大部分技术，而发明者则选择通过出售或许可他们的发明来获取回报。 这个项目的目标是测量这个技术市场的范围，并探索它是如何随着时间的推移而扩大和深化的，它的交换机制是如何演变的，以及在发明者之间起中介作用的机构的性质。 以及那些对开发和商业化新技术感兴趣的人。 另一个目标是了解发明活动在多大程度上位于使用该技术的公司内部的变化。 最后，分析了组织因素与发明创造地理集聚的相互作用。

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.