The commercialization of inventions is an investment, similar to spending on plant and equipment, and accordingly we would expect it to be affected by macroeconomic conditions. Using data on the commercialization activity from over 4000 inventors, we find evidence that macroeconomic conditions...

This paper estimates the effect of a patent grant on the likelihood that an invention will progress to different commercialization stages using survey data on 3,162 inventions which have been the subject of a patent application. We found that about 40 percent of all inventions advanced to the...