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，以专利数量为衡量标准。主要研究员将汇编和使用一个基于文本的专利数据集，该数据集使用地理信息系统技术与地图相联系。该项目通过研究创新的地理分布和概念上的相互联系，为创新文献作出贡献。在创新史和经济地理学中考察这些关系将有助于分离出刺激技术发展的潜在因素。在世纪，各地之间的人员、货物和信息流动急剧增加，特别是在美国境内。该项目研究了“运输革命”促进创新活动的假设，这将通过专利申请率和来自不同地方的专利的结构相似性来揭示。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，而不仅仅是人口稠密或创新地区。PI通过将其城镇和县信息与AnimMap 3.0.2 County Boundary Historical Atlas中的历史城镇名称数据库合并，对1836年之前在美国颁发的专利进行地理定位（与经纬度坐标匹配）。 该项目将利用光学字符识别技术从文件图片中创建的文本与1836年后专利的位置联系起来。通过使用文本分析，该项目将有助于我们理解创新的其他不可观察的方面。它将在1838-1870年和1880-1897年之间发布的所有专利的全文数据库中搜索语言关系，以探索相关思想的产生和传播。通过地理信息系统将这些可搜索的全文专利数据与交通和人口数据联系起来，将提供一个地图，使人们能够更清楚、更复杂地了解创新聚集。一大类经济模型假设，技术变革与通过城市密度和大量人口相结合的思想传播有关。很明显，人口密集的大城市比其他地方更具创新性，但规模和密度不足以引发技术进步。PI研究的假设是，通过扩大交通基础设施，增加市场准入，从而加速创新;另外，研究的假设是，在大城市以外地区，增加交流，从而促进创新。找出基础设施、市场准入和创新之间的因果关系，有助于解决美国经济史上关于发展过程的悬而未决的问题。这项研究的结果可能会被用来帮助建模，否则不同的; fffficient功能的内生增长。这种分析将有助于理清这些因素，建立创新的历史进程的年表，并通过测量的大小和时间的影响因素。这里收集的数据集也可用于解决相关问题，如历史创新研究;工业和城市群;创新与经济增长之间的空间关系;以及回答经济地理学和创新经济学所告知的特定行业问题。