Is the “sailing-ship effect” misnamed? A statistical inquiry of the case sail vs steam in maritime transportation

Improvements experienced by incumbent “old” technologies when threatened by new ones, potentially supplanting them, are often addressed as the “sailing-ship effect.” The latter phrase points to the eponymous case that consists of the 60-year or so technological battle between sail and steam in ships’ propulsion during the 19th century, which led to unexpected large advancements in sail technology. Paradoxically, until today, the only work which addressed quantitatively that technological battle actually found a lack of evidence of the occurrence of the sailing-ship effect. In this paper, through fresh statistical analysis, we find instead confirmation of the existence of the effect in the original case. This finding contributes to the theoretical debate that explains technological persistence through mechanisms such as path dependence, cumulativeness, localized technical progress, competence and cognitive traps, the presence of complementary assets and tributary innovations, as well as institutional features. Policy dimensions are considered in Section 7 of the work.