Prior research argues that USPTO first-action allowance rates increase with examiner seniority and experience, suggesting lower patent quality. However, we show that the increased use of examiner's amendments account for this prior empirical finding. Further, the mechanism reduces patent...

This paper examines the intertemporal returns of patented inventions using estimates of patent value obtained from German employee inventors’ compensation records. The paper finds heterogeneity in the mean age and dispersion of the annual returns by technology and cumulative patent value....

Most studies evaluating the macroeconomic effects of financial support policies on business-funded R&D use econometric methods that do not consider the existence of spatial effects, and generate biased estimates. In this paper, we discus and address this problem using spatial dynamic panel data...

We evaluate the impact of cooperation with public research on firms’ product and process innovations in France and Germany using Community Innovation Survey data from 2004 and 2008. We find that cooperating with public research increases product innovation, but has no effect on process...

Europe is perceived to lag behind the US in converting its academic results into economic outcomes. Using new survey data and controlling for standard factors affecting the productivity of Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs), we find that European TTOs do not execute less licenses than US TTOs....

This study analyses the impact and effectiveness of targeted public support for R&D investment at the firm level. We test whether the policy design aiming at incentivizing (international) collaboration and R&D in SMEs achieves input as well as output additionality. Our results show that the...

Economic theory predicts that policies that discourage the consumption of a particular good will induce innovation in a socially desirable substitute. However, the literature on technology trajectories emphasizes the possibility of innovation waves associated with the identification of new...

Subsidized research joint ventures (RJVs) between public research institutions and industry have become increasingly popular in Europe and the US. We study the long-run effects of such a support scheme that has been maintained by the Danish government since 1995. To cope with identification...

By changing the level of competition and/or affecting the allocation of resources, institutions can play a very important role on innovation activity. In this paper we investigate the relative importance of institutional variation across European countries in explaining differences in their...

This paper presents a quality index for patent systems. The index is composed of nine operational design components that shape the transparency and stringency of patent systems and affect the extent to which they comply with patentability conditions. Seven components are related to rules and...