The contribution made by innovation and new technologies to economic growth and welfare is largely determined by the rate and manner by which innovations diffuse throughout the relevant population, but this topic has been a somewhat neglected one in the economics of innovation. This chapter,...

This document describes the panel of publicly traded United States manufacturing firms which was created and updated at the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1978 through 1988 within the Productivity Program. The panel consists of about 2600 large manufacturing firms with three to...

This paper uses a newly available dataset on the R&D performance of individual French manufacturing firms for the 1980s to replicate and update a series of studies on French R&D and productivity growth at the firm level during the 1970s. The focus of the paper is on the use of a single dataset...

Universities are a key institution in the US innovation system and an important aspect of their involvement is the role they play in Private-Public Partnering activities. This study seeks to gain a better understanding of the performance of university-industry research partnerships using a...

The contribution of new technology to economic growth can only be realized when and if the new technology is widely diffused and used. Diffusion itself results from a series of individual decisions to begin using the new technology, decisions which are often the result of a comparison of the...

This paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 94 "inventions" contributed by major multinational innovators to the "Eco-Patent Commons", which provides royalty-free access to third parties to patented climate change related innovations. By comparing the pledged patents to other...

This paper discusses methods for the harmonization and combination of large-scale patent and trademark datasets with each other and other sources of data. Dictionary- and rule-based approaches to the consolidation of applicant names in patent data are presented and shown to have both benefits...

We review the econometric literature on measuring the returns to R&D. The theoretical frameworks that have been used are outlined, followed by an extensive discussion of measurement and econometric issues that arise when estimating the models. We then provide a series of tables summarizing the...

What do we know about the relationship between innovation and productivity among firms? The workhorse model of this relationship is presented and the implications of analysis using this model and the usually available data on product and process innovation are derived. The recent empirical...

We analyze the patent filing strategies of foreign pharmaceutical companies in Chile distinguishing between “primary” (active ingredient) and “secondary” patents (patents on modified compounds, formulations, dosages, particular medical uses etc.). There is prior evidence that secondary...