We investigate a sample of 180 technology licensing contracts closed by German chemical, pharmaceutical, and electrical engineering companies between 1880 and 1913. A regression analysis shows that licensing contracts closed before a patent was granted and contracts closed between firms and...

We investigate a sample of 180 technology licensing contracts closed by German chemical, pharmaceutical, and electrical engineering companies between 1880 and 1913. Our empirical results suggest that strategic behaviour seems to be relevant for the design of licensing contracts, whereas inventor...

The allocation of intellectual property rights between firms and employed researchers causes a principal-agent problem between the two parties. We investigate the working contracts of inventors employed by German chemical, pharmaceutical, and electrical engineering firms at the turn of the 20th...

We investigate a sample of 180 technology licensing contracts closed by German chemical, pharmaceutical, and electrical engineering companies between 1880 and 1913. Our empirical results suggest that strategic behaviour seems to be relevant for the design of licensing contracts, whereas inventor...

We describe the transfer of patents in late 19th- and early 20th- century Germany using a new and comprehensive database containing information on about 20,000 transactions. The number of transactions shows an upward trend, in total numbers and as a share of patents in force. In total, about...

Throughout the period 1871-1938, the average British worker was better off than the average German worker, but there were significant differences between major sectors. For the aggregate economy, the real wage gap was about the same as the labour productivity gap, but again there were important...

We estimate effective spreads and round-trip transaction costs at the Berlin Stock Exchange for the period 1892-1913 using daily stock market returns for a sample of 27 stocks. Our results show that transaction costs at the main stock exchange in a bank-based financial system at the turn of the...