Technical progress increasingly relies on the use of scientific knowledge. But if much of this knowledge is in the public domain, can it be a source of private value? We find that average private returns to using public science are small, especially in crowded technical fields, consistent with...

We model early expectations about the value and technological importance ('quality') of a patented innovation as a latent variable common to a set of four indicators: the number of patent claims, forward citations, backward citations and family size. The model is estimated for four technology...

It may be advantageous to provide a variety of kinds of patent protection to heterogenous innovations. Innovations which benefit society largely through their use as building blocks to future inventions may require a different scope of protection in order to be encouraged. We model the problem...

This paper summarizes a number of studies which use patent data to examine different aspects of technological change. It describes our firm level data set construction effort; reports on the relationship between RLD expenditures and the level of patenting; analyzes the relationship between...

The main goal of this paper is to put forward a methodology for the measurement of product innovations using a value metric, i.e., equating the "magnitude" of innovations with the welfare gains that they generate. This research design is applied to the case of Computed Tomography (CT) Scanners,...

This paper is an attempt to explain diffusion in the production of an innovation. Diffusion in production is defined as the increase in number of producers, or net entry, in the market for a new product. It is to be distinguished from the more familiar problem in the literature on technical...

We study how the inventive capability of a firm conditions its participation in a division of innovative labor. Capable firms are, by definition, able to invent; for them, external inventions substitute for their own R&D. However, external knowledge is an input into internal invention, and thus,...