This chapter summarizes the basic characteristics of patent data as an innovation indicator and reviews some of the recent research using patent data, focusing on major developments since Griliches in 1990 [Griliches, Z. (1990). “Patent statistics as economic indicators: A survey”. Journal...

R&D spillovers across firms have long been seen as a cause for faster innovation, with positive effects on productivity and growth (Griliches [1992], Bernstein and Nadiri [1988, 1989], Romer [1994]). Does inventors' mobility increase these spillovers? To answer this question we develop two...