IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/cliomt/v19y2025i2d10.1007_s11698-025-00305-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Technology transfer and domestic innovation: evidence from a new dataset of Italian inventors, 1855–1914

Author

Listed:
  • Marco Martinez

    (University of Pisa)

Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between the exposure of Italian inventors to foreign technologies and the quality of their inventions from the Unification (1861) to WWI. The paper relies on two complementary individual-level datasets: The first dataset comprises all the more than 131,000 patents registered in Italy between 1855 and 1914 as reported (Martinez et al., Soc Sci Hist 1861–1938, 2024). The second dataset contains biographical information about notable inventors and thus allows to obtain both technology- and inventor-based measures of the quality of inventions. The findings indicate that the direct exposure to foreign technologies improved the quality of patents, but the benefits were not substantial. While exposure to technologically similar patents from France and Great Britain led to an improvement in the quality of patents, exposure to more technologically distant patents from Germany did not. These findings suggest that Italian inventors benefitted from the exposure to foreign technologies to a limited extent.

Suggested Citation

  • Marco Martinez, 2025. "Technology transfer and domestic innovation: evidence from a new dataset of Italian inventors, 1855–1914," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 19(2), pages 375-419, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:cliomt:v:19:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11698-025-00305-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s11698-025-00305-x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11698-025-00305-x
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11698-025-00305-x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Technology transfer; Patents; Quality of invention; Technological distance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • N14 - Economic History - - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics; Industrial Structure; Growth; Fluctuations - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N73 - Economic History - - Economic History: Transport, International and Domestic Trade, Energy, and Other Services - - - Europe: Pre-1913
    • O14 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Industrialization; Manufacturing and Service Industries; Choice of Technology
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

    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:spr:cliomt:v:19:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s11698-025-00305-x. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.