Patents, Citations, and Innovations: A Window on the Knowledge Economy

by Adam B. Jaffe

Innovation and technological change, long recognized as the main drivers of long-term economic growth, are elusive notions that are difficult to conceptualize and even harder to measure in a consistent, systematic way. This book demonstrates the usefulness of patents and citations data as a window on the process of technological change and as a powerful tool for research on the economics of innovation. Patent records contain a wealth of information, including the inventors' identity, location, and employer, as well as the technological field of the invention. Patents also contain citation references to previous patents, which allow one to trace links across inventions. The book lays out the conceptual foundations for such research and provides a range of interesting applications, such as examining the geographic pattern of knowledge spillovers and evaluating the impact of university and government patenting. It also describes statistical tools designed to handle methodological problems raised by the patent and citation processes. The book is accompanied by a set of auxiliary materials, including complete data on 3 million patents with more than 16 million citations and a range of author-devised measures of the importance, generality, and originality of patented innovations. This is available for download at //mitpress.mit.edu/jaffecdcontents.

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Gabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection of some of the most important works in economics using quantitative patent data. Most of the articles come from the NBER economists who paved the way to create the patent database. This book is mostly targeted towards academic economists. Some articles may be difficult for people without substantial economics training.

[Maikel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The basic work on citation analysis to measure knowledge flows and spillovers. If you want to do research in this field, you need to read this.