James Bessen (born 1950) is an economist who has been a lecturer at Boston University School of Law since 2004. He is presently best known for his data-led research concerning software and innovation. He has also demonstrated the diverse impacts of automation on employment and wages. In more recent work, he has established links between investment in software and market dominance in a number of sectors. Before entering academia professionally, Bessen was previously a software developer and CEO of Bestinfo, a software company. Bessen was also a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. James Bessen

Bessen researches the economics of innovation, including patents and economic history. He has written about

software patents A software patent is a patent on a piece of software, such as a computer program, library, user interface, or algorithm. The validity of these patents can be difficult to evaluate, as software is often at once a product of engineering, something ...

with Eric Maskin, arguing that they might inhibit

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

rather than stimulate progress. With Michael J. Meurer, he wrote ''Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk'' as well as papers on patent trolls. His book ''Learning by Doing: The Real Connection Between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth'' 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 In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for what you see is what you get, refers to software that allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed document, web ...

desktop publishing Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using dedicated software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online co ...

program at a community newspaper in

Philadelphia Philadelphia ( ), colloquially referred to as Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania, most populous city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the List of United States cities by population, sixth-most populous city in the Unit ...

in 1983. He established and ran a company, Bestinfo, to sell that program commercially. In 1993, Bestinfo was sold to Intergraph. He graduated from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

in 1972.

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* 1958 births Living people 21st-century American economists Boston University School of Law faculty American technology chief executives Harvard University alumni {{US-economist-stub