Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics - Dissertation Enhancement Project:The Geography of Innovation: Patents in Early America

经济学博士论文研究 - 论文改进项目：创新地理学：早期美国的专利

• 批准号: 1426282
• 负责人: Robert Margo
• 金额: $ 0.74万
• 依托单位: Trustees of Boston University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-07-01 至 2016-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1426282&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Enhancement

This project explores the relationship between urbanization and innovation in nineteenth-century America as measured by number of patents issued. The PIs will compile and use a text-based dataset of patents linked to maps using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques. The project contributes to the literature on innovation by examining the geographical spread and conceptual interconnectedness of innovations. Examining these relationships in the history of innovation and economic geography will help isolate the underlying factors that spur technological development.The movement of people, goods, and information among places increased dramatically over the nineteenth century, particularly within the United States. The project examines the hypothesis that the "transportation revolution" facilitated innovative activity, and this will be revealed through rates of patenting and also textural similarities in patents originating in different places. The project maps the relationship between patents and population for all counties in the US from 1790 to 1900, not just populous or innovative locations. The PIs geo-locate (matching with latitude and longitude coordinates) patents issued in the US before 1836 by merging their town and county information with a database of historical town names from the AniMap 3.0.2 County Boundary Historical Atlas. The project links the text, created from pictures of the documents using optical character recognition, with the location of post-1836 patents.By using textual analysis, this project will contribute to our understanding of otherwise unobservable aspects of innovation. It will search for linguistic relationships within a full-text database of all patents issued between 1838-1870 and 1880-1897 to explore the generation and spread of interrelated ideas. Linking this searchable, full-text patent data with transportation and population data through GIS will give a mapping that allows a clearer and more sophisticated understanding of innovative agglomerations. A large class of economic models has assumed that technological change is related to the spread of ideas through combination of urban density and large populations. It is clear that large, dense cities are more innovative than other places, but size and density are not su;fficient to induce technological improvements. The PIs study the hypothesis that increasing market access leads to an acceleration of innovation through the spread of transportation infrastructure, as well as the alternate hypothesis that increased communication led to increasing innovation outside of the major urban areas.Finding the direction of causality among infrastructure, market access, and innovation will help solve outstanding questions in economic history about the development process of the United States. The results of this study may be used to assist in modeling an otherwise di;fficult feature of endogenous growth. This analysis will help disentangle these factors by establishing the chronology of the historical process of innovation, and by measuring the magnitude and timing of the effects of the contributing factors. The dataset assembled here can also be used to address related issues, in the study of historical innovation; industrial and urban agglomerations; the spatial relationship between innovation and economic growth; and to answer industry-specific questions informed by both economic geography and the economics of innovation.

该项目探讨了19世纪美国城市化与创新之间的关系，按照发行的专利数量来衡量。 PI将使用地理信息系统（GIS）技术进行编译和使用基于文本的专利数据集。该项目通过研究创新的地理传播和概念相互联系，为创新的文献做出了贡献。研究创新和经济地理史上的这些关系将有助于隔离刺激技术发展的根本因素。人们，商品和信息的运动在十九世纪，尤其是在美国范围内急剧增长。该项目探讨了“运输革命”促进创新活动的假设，这将通过专利率以及源自不同地方的专利的质地相似性来揭示。该项目绘制了1790年至1900年美国所有县的专利与人口之间的关系，而不仅仅是人口众多或创新的地点。 PIS地理位置（与纬度和经度坐标相匹配）在1836年之前在美国发行的专利，通过将其城镇和县信息与Animap 3.0.2县边界历史地图集的历史镇名称数据库合并。 该项目链接了使用光学字符识别的文档图片创建的文本，以及1836年后专利的位置。通过使用文本分析，该项目将有助于我们理解其他不可观察的创新方面。它将在1838- 1870年至1880 - 1897年间发行的所有专利的全文数据库中搜索语言关系，以探索相互关联的想法的产生和传播。将此可搜索的全文专利数据与通过GIS的运输和人口数据联系起来，将提供一个映射，从而使对创新集聚的更清晰，更复杂的理解。大量的经济模型假设技术变革与城市密度和大量人口的结合与思想的传播有关。显然，大型城市比其他地方更具创新性，但规模和密度并不属于诱导技术改进的问题。 PIS研究的假设是，通过运输基础设施的传播传播以及替代假设，增加沟通的沟通会导致创新的加速，从而导致沟通不断增加，从而在主要城市领域之外越来越多地创新，从而在基础设施，市场访问和创新方面促进了基础设施的发展方向，并有助于解决经济发展的良好问题，这将有助于发展纽约的发展。这项研究的结果可用于协助建模内源性生长的原样特征。该分析将通过建立创新历史过程的年表，并测量促成因素的影响的大小和时机来帮助消除这些因素。在历史创新研究中，这里组装的数据集也可以用来解决相关问题；工业和城市聚集；创新与经济增长之间的空间关系；并回答以经济地理和创新经济学告知的特定于行业的问题。