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The displacement of the centre of the European economy from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and the beginning of north-south divergence in Europe has been discussed on the basis of data on real wages, urbanization rates, and, more recently, estimates of gross domestic product for a number of European countries. The purpose of the present article is to contribute to this line of research with the elaboration of yearly series of total energy consumption in Italy and England for the long period 1560-1913. New data on energy services, energy intensity, and, finally, social savings from the use of energy are also presented and discussed for both Italy and England. These new data allow us to specify that energy played a central role. Yet it was relatively late that its importance as a provider of mechanical work developed fully; that is, from 1830 onwards in England and from the end of the nineteenth century in Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the phenomenon of independent invention in Italy during the Liberal Age (1861-1913). It makes use of a new dataset comprising all patents granted in Italy in five benchmark years: 1864-5, 1881, 1891, 1902, and 1911. The following exercises are carried out. First, an examination is undertaken of the shares of independent, corporate, and foreign inventions and their evolution over time and across industries. Second, by exploiting the peculiarities of Italian patent legislation, which was characterized by relatively cheap fees and a flexible renewal scheme, the relative quality of independent and corporate patents is assessed. The results indicate that in Italy independent inventors made an important contribution to technological change in terms of number of patents, but the quality of their patents was significantly lower than that of firms and of foreign patentees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]