We use a newly developed data set of 39,343 high-value patents granted between 1877 and 1918 to demonstrate that technological progress during German industrialization occurred in at least four different technological waves. We distinguish the railway wave (187786), the dye wave (188796), the...

Recent innovation literature has documented the benefits of cross-pollination of ideas across a wide set of industries and technology fields in an economy. Industrial and trade policies, by contrast, tend to favor economic specialization through the promotion of selected sectors. In this paper...