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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Published in | The Rand journal of economics Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 172 - 187 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Mount Morris, Ill
The Rand Corporation
01.04.1990
The RAND Corporation Rand Corp |
Series | RAND Journal of Economics |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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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. |
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ISSN: | 0741-6261 1756-2171 |
DOI: | 10.2307/2555502 |