Institutional Innovation and the Adoption of New Technologies: The Case of Steam
利用瑞典工业化时期的纵向企业数据，发现有限责任公司的出现显著提高了工业企业采用蒸汽技术的概率，部分原因是它使小企业能够扩大规模至蒸汽技术可行的程度。
This paper documents how the advent of the limited liability corporation contributed to the diffusion of steam technology during Sweden’s industrialization. Using longitudinal establishment-level data, we show that incorporation sharply raised the probability that industrial establishments adopted steam. Incorporation facilitated technology adoption partly by enabling smaller establishments to expand to a greater scale, where the use of steam became feasible. These results highlight that low barriers to incorporation may be an important lever for facilitating the diffusion of new technologies.