This paper uses the adoption and invention of the spinning jenny as a test case to understand why the industrial revolution occurred in Britain in the eighteenth century rather than in France or India.  It is shown that wages were much higher relative to capital prices in Britain than in other...

The commercial value of basic knowledge depends on the arrival of follow-up developments mostly from outside the boundaries of the inventing firm. Private returns would depend on the extent the inventing firm internalizes these follow-up developments. Such internalization is less likely to occur...

It is shown that spillovers can enhance private returns to innovation if they feed back into the dynamic research of the original inventor (Internalized spillovers), but will always reduce private returns, if the original inventor does not benefit from the advancements other inventors build into...