About
I’m a Researcher in Economic History at Lund University, where I defended my PhD in June 2026. I study how innovation emerges and who gets to innovate.
In my research I build large-scale patent and inventor microdata to explain the gender patenting gap, trace how collaboration reshapes inventors’ careers, and measure the diffusion of ideas. I develop machine-learning pipelines to turn historical records, including handwritten ones, into data I can analyze.
For more, see my research, talks, teaching, dissertation, and CV.
Featured Paper
What Happens When Inventors Collaborate? Evidence from 19th-Century French Patents Merouani, Y. 2026. [Draft PDF] Winner of the 2026 Best Young Researcher Paper Award, International Joseph A. Schumpeter Society.
Using text-based measures of novelty and influence and Sun–Abraham event studies on the full universe of French patents, I show that collaboration does not raise productivity or originality, but it permanently diversifies inventors’ technological focus. I also use network analysis to show that “structural holes” enable this boundary-crossing, with particularly strong effects for women inventors.
Forthcoming
Women Inventors: On the Origins of the Gender Patenting Gap
Merouani, Y. & Perrin, F. Forthcoming, Journal of Economic History. [Working paper version]
Working Papers
What Shaped Women’s Invention during Industrialization? Merouani, Y. 2026. [Draft PDF]
Technology Transfer and Innovation between Fin-de-Siècle France and Italy, 1860–1914 Martinez, M., Merouani, Y. & Perrin, F. Revise and resubmit, Scandinavian Economic History Review.
Pioneering Women: The Determinants of Women’s Inventive Productivity Merouani, Y. & Perrin, F. Under review.
Selected Publications
Gender and the Long-Run Development Process: A Survey of the Literature.
Merouani, Y. & Perrin, F. 2022. European Review of Economic History, 26(4), 612–641. doi:10.1093/ereh/heac008
Myths and Biases: An Exploration of Women’s Historical Patenting Activities.
Merouani, Y. & Perrin, F. 2024. In C. Le Chapelain (ed.), Nineteenth Century Businesswomen, Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-56411-6_13
Surviving on the Island: Linking Firm Survival and Contextual Factors in a Peripheral Region.
Merouani, Y., Box, M., Larsson Segerlind, T. & Rytkönen, P. 2023. In M. Xheneti et al. (eds.), Contextual Embeddedness of Entrepreneurship, Edward Elgar, 12–31. doi:10.4337/9781035320684.00009