A Penny for Your Quotes: Patent Citations and the Value of Innovations

The use of patents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value, and hence, simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output. The purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Rand journal of economics Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 172 - 187
Main Author Trajtenberg, Manuel
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Mount Morris, Ill The Rand Corporation 01.04.1990
The RAND Corporation
Rand Corp
SeriesRAND Journal of Economics
Subjects
Bibliographic citations
Business innovation
Citation analysis
Citation indexes
Computerized axial tomography
Economic value
Product innovation
Symposium on Patents and Technology Licensing
Technological innovation
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Summary:The use of patents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value, and hence, simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output. The purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations, thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts. The empirical analysis of a particular innovation (Computed Tomography scanners) indeed shows a close association between citation-based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field. Moreover, the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear (increasing) in the number of citations, implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin. As in previous studies, simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous R however, here the association is within a field over time rather than cross-sectional.
ISSN:0741-6261
1756-2171
DOI:10.2307/2555502