Interdisciplinary Seminar in Economic History: Changing the Perception of Time: Railroads, Access to Knowledge and Innovation in Nineteenth Century France
09/05/2023 (Seminars)
Bank of Greece, DIESOI
The Historical Archives of the Bank of Greece, in the context of the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Economic History, jointly organised with the Athens University of Economics and Business and Panteion University, invite you to the lecture entitled:
Changing the Perception of Time: Railroads, Access to Knowledge and Innovation in Nineteenth Century France
Speaker: Georgios Tsiachtsiras (University of Bristol)
A few words on the topic:
Over the second half of the nineteenth century, railroad construction transformed the French economy. Railways generated economic relations and cultural environments, stimulated commerce and created new economic opportunities. The creation of the rail network changed the perception of time. A striking example of this transformation is the travel time between Paris and Marseille. In 1814, the duration of this trip was four to five days, while by 1857, this trip took about 13 hours. This was due to the large-scale construction of French railroads. But how did this enormous expansion of railroads affect innovation performance?
The presentation documents that access to the rail network increases regional innovation activity, as proxied by the number of patents in the historical database of the National Institute of Industrial Property of France. An access to knowledge index is used to analyse the underlying mechanism driving the main results and shows that, by reducing least-cost distances between cantons, railways intensified the influence exerted by neighbouring concentrations of inventors, thereby triggering the spread of patenting. Next, the role of a global city, such as Paris, on the diffusion of new technologies is investigated. The speaker shall present evidence that access to the knowledge mechanism operates via inventors working in similar fields, while access to a global city is associated with a higher probability of a city to innovate in a completely new technological sector. Finally, a back of the envelope calculation based on canals and roads shows that in the absence of railroads, the invention rate of the French cantons would have been, on average, 24.14% lower.
The sessions are held at the Museum of the Bank of Greece, at 3, Amerikis Street, Athens, and are open to the public, without requiring prior registration. The seminar is conducted in Greek, unless otherwise indicated.
The complete programme of upcoming lectures is available on the website of the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Economic History.
Relative links:
Poster of the event