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Vatiero_2023_Else_econletters
Journal article

Does brick size matter? : Albert G. Keller on another QWERTY story

  • Fiorito, Luca University of Palermo, Italy
  • Vatiero, Massimiliano ORCID University of Trento, Italy ; Istituto di diritto (IDUSI), Facoltà di scienze economiche, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • 2022
Published in:
  • Economics Letters. - 2022, vol. 223, p. 110974
QWERTY keyboard
Institutional lag
Lock in
English In his seminal “Clio and the Economics of Qwerty”, Paul David indicates Thorstein Veblen’s famous discussion of the British system of coal rail haulage as an intellectual antecedent to the idea of lock in. This note documents how Albert G. Keller, a Yale sociologist contemporary of Veblen, had presented a similar argument in connection to the establishment of a brick tax in England and its effects on the size of bricks. Like Veblen, Keller used this illustration to emphasize the inertia exercised by certain institutional conditions.
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Language
  • English
Classification
Economics
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
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https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1324937
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