IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ier/iecrev/v47y2006i4p1341-1348.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

James Watt As Intellectual Monopolist: Comment On Boldrin And Levine

Author

Listed:
  • George Selgin
  • John Turner

Abstract

In their 2003 Lawrence R. Klein Lecture, Michele Boldrin and David Levine argue that intellectual property rights may be damaging to social welfare. As empirical evidence for their theory they offer James Watt's steam engine patent, claiming that it delayed the Industrial Revolution by as much as two decades. We show that this claim, as well as the more general claim that Watt's story supports Boldrin and Levine's theory, rests upon a distorted summary of the historical record. Copyright 2006 by the Economics Department Of The University Of Pennsylvania And Osaka University Institute Of Social And Economic Research Association.

Suggested Citation

  • George Selgin & John Turner, 2006. "James Watt As Intellectual Monopolist: Comment On Boldrin And Levine," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(4), pages 1341-1348, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:ier:iecrev:v:47:y:2006:i:4:p:1341-1348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boldrin Michele & Levine David K., 2009. "Does Intellectual Monopoly Help Innovation?," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 991-1024, December.
    2. Evrin, Alperen, 2013. "International Specialization in Research & Development," MPRA Paper 62392, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. George Selgin & John L. Turner, 2011. "Strong Steam, Weak Patents, or the Myth of Watt's Innovation-Blocking Monopoly, Exploded," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 54(4), pages 841-861.
    4. Selgin George & Turner John L., 2009. "Watt, Again? Boldrin and Levine Still Exaggerate the Adverse Effect of Patents on the Progress of Steam Power," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 1101-1113, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ier:iecrev:v:47:y:2006:i:4:p:1341-1348. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deupaus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.