Patent Growth in the Old Dominion: The Impact of Railroad Integration before 1880
利用19世纪弗吉尼亚州的人均专利数量衡量人力资本，研究铁路整合对发明活动的影响，发现铁路整合促进了北弗吉尼亚的发明，但前种植园地区落后了。
Endogenous growth theories suggest that market integration will be more conducive to economic development when the previously isolated regions have large stocks of human capital. This paper uses the level of per capita patenting in nineteenth-century Virginia to measure this human capital. By the end of the 1870s, the rail network of the Old Dominion was rapidly being integrated with the rest of the nation. Inventiveness spread throughout northern Virginia, but the former plantation areas of the state fell behind.