A Standardized Coefficients Model to Analyze the Regional Patents Activity: Evidence from the Mexican States

A standardized coefficients model to explain and assess the importance of some factors that currently are contributing to patenting level in the Mexican states is proposed. From a theoretical point of view, patenting level may be the result of several factors such as the growth of the high-tech industries, education expenditure, schooling level, scientific research projects, and agglomeration activities, among others. The relative importance of such factors on patenting level is assessed. It seems that trade liberalization has encouraged vertical links via patenting, but technology and ideas are not disseminating across states, indicating that invents from firms—both residents and nonresidents—are private and not easily spread to other firms. From the empirical results, we conclude that public knowledge capital and high-tech industries must become high-priority objectives for the government policies in order to affect regional inventiveness capacity, and so, the long-term economic growth. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2015