Replication Files for "Reassessing the Contributions of Black Inventors to the Golden Age of Innovation"

Replication files for "Reassessing the Contributions of Black Inventors to the Golden Age of Innovation" by Michael J. Andrews and Jonathan T. Rothwell, Essays in Economic and Business History 2023. <br><br>During the Second Industrial Revolution
and subsequently, it is widely believed that Black Americans contributed
disproportionately little to the economic development of the United States,
especially in comparison to European Americans and immigrants from Europe. Yet,
Black Americans tended to live in entirely different institutional environments
than other Americans, particularly in the South under Jim Crow laws. Using a
new database that matches inventors to census records, we find that patenting
rates for Black Americans living in the North were very similar to patenting
rates for White Americans from 1870 to 1940; in some decades and states,
Northern Black patenting rates exceeded the patenting rate for White Americans.
In the South, patenting rates were low for both Black and White Americans,
while patenting rates for Northern Black residents were far higher than those
for Southern White residents. We additionally find that Black Americans from
all regions were responsible for more patents than immigrants from all but two
countries (Germany and England). In total, we estimate that African Americans invented
more than 50,000 patents over the period. Thus, when freed of extreme political
oppression, Black Americans demonstrated a level of inventiveness that matched the
most inventive groups in US history.<br>