James Bessen
James Bessen | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1950 |
| Occupation(s) | Executive Director of the Technology & Policy Research Initiative, Lecturer |
| Employer | Boston University School of Law |
James Bessen (born 1950) is an economist who has been a lecturer at Boston University School of Law since 2004,.[1] He is presently best known for his data-led research concerning software and innovation.[2] He has also demonstrated the diverse impacts of automation on employment and wages.[3] In more recent work, he has established links between investment in software and market dominance in a number of sectors.[4] Before entering academia professionally, Bessen was previously a software developer and CEO of Bestinfo, a software company.[5] Bessen was also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.[6]
Bessen researches the economics of innovation, including patents and economic history. He has written about software patents with Eric Maskin, arguing that they might inhibit innovation rather than stimulate progress.[7] With Michael J. Meurer, he wrote Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk[8] as well as papers on patent trolls.[9] His book Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth[10] argues that major new technologies require new skills and knowledge that are slow and difficult to develop, affecting jobs and wages.
Bessen developed the first WYSIWYG desktop publishing program at a community newspaper in Philadelphia in 1983.[11] He established and ran a company, Bestinfo, to sell that program commercially. In 1993, Bestinfo was sold to Intergraph.[12]
He graduated from Harvard University in 1972.[13]
References
- ^ "James Bessen | School of Law". www.bu.edu.
- ^ "publication record". Google Scholar.
- ^ Bessen, James (December 2019). "Automation and jobs: when technology boosts employment". Economic Policy. 34 (100).
- ^ Bessen, James (2022). The New Goliaths How Corporations Use Software to Dominate Industries, Kill Innovation, and Undermine Regulation. Yale University Press.
- ^ Admin (2015-04-02). "Barriers to innovations crush U.S. entrepreneurship". Asia Times. Retrieved 2023-10-17.
- ^ "Bestinfo: WYSIWYG on an IBM PC," Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, 14(4) pp. 15-23.
- ^ Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation, by James Bessen and Eric Maskin, Discussion paper, MIT (2000), published in The RAND Journal of Economics, Volume 40, Issue 4, pages 611–635, Winter 2009
- ^ Princeton University Press (2008)
- ^ "The Direct Costs from NPE Disputes," Cornell Law Review, v. 99 (2014) "The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls," Regulation, 34(4), Winter 2011-12
- ^ Yale University Press (2015)
- ^ "What You See Is Pretty Close to What You Get: New h&j, pagination program for IBM PC," Seybold Report on Publishing Systems, 13(10), February 13, 1984, pp. 21-2.
- ^ "Test Story". scripting.com.
- ^ "James Bessen | School of Law". www.bu.edu.
External links
- "Official website". Research on Innovation.
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