Comparisons of poverty rates are only rarely based on identical underlying definitions of welfare. The authors examine the sensitivity of poverty rates calculated from alternative definitions of consumption. They consider what theory can say about the direction of bias in comparisons and show...

Poverty comparisons--an increasingly important starting-point for welfare policy analysis--are almost always based on household surveys. Therefore they require that one be able to distinguish underlying differences in the populations being compared from sampling variation: standard errors must...

Empirical estimates of the private value of patent protection are derived for four technology areas--computers, textiles, combustion engines, and pharmaceuticals--using new patent data for West Germany, 1953-88. Patentees must pay renewal fees to keep their patents in force as well as legal...

This paper investigates the characteristics of litigated patents by combining for the first time information about patent case filings from the U.S. district courts and detailed data from the U.S. Patents and Trademark Office. A series of indicators is constructed for the factors which the...

This paper investigates the effect of the threat and occurrence of patent litigation on the private value of patent protection. Potential challenges are introduced into a renewal model as a factor in patentee decisions as to whether a patent is worth maintaining. The model yields testable...

Poverty maps, providing information on the spatial distribution of living standards, are an important tool for policy making and economic research. Policymakers can use such maps to allocate transfers and inform policy design. The maps can also be used to investigate the relationship between...

We study the determinants of patent suits and their outcomes over the period 1978-1999 by linking detailed information from the U.S. patent office, the federal court system, and industry sources. The probability of being involved in a suit is heterogeneous, being much higher for valuable patents...

We analyse the determinants of the decline in measured research productivity (the patent/R&D ratio)using panel data on manufacturing firms in the U.S. for the period 1980-93. We focus on three factors: the level of demand, the quality of patents, and technological exhaustion. We first develop an...