Patenting in England,Scotland and Ireland during the Industrial Revolution, 1700–1852

There are two competing accounts for explaining Britain's technological transformation during the Industrial Revolution. One sees it as the inevitable outcome of a largely exogenous increase in the supply of new ideas and ways of thinking. The other sees it as a demand side response to economic incentives—that in Britain, it paid to invent the technology of the Industrial Revolution. However, this second interpretation relies on the assumption that inventors were sufficiently responsive to new commercial opportunities. This paper tests this assumption, using a new dataset of Scottish and Irish patents. It finds that the propensity of inventors to extend patent protection into Scotland and/or Ireland was indeed closely correlated with the relative market opportunity of the patented invention.     

The value of invention patents in China: Country origin and technology field differences

This paper improves renewal payment based patent value model by introducing unexpired patents into the model. We estimate value of the invention patents based on SIPO records in China and compare values of patents between local owners and owners from the U.S., Japan and European countries. The study reveals that patent value from Chinese owners is much lower than that of overseas owners. This larger value gap implies important difference in motive of the patenting and R&D quality between China and those technology intensive sources usually from economically advanced countries and regions. The model developed in this study is also applied to patent data in different technical fields, successfully differing technical sectors with higher value (e.g., machinery) and those with lower value (e.g., pharmaceuticals), in terms of China market based patent records. Both applications prove that the newly developed model can be an important analytical tool for providing classified patent value on different purposes, especially in case of China.     

The value of Chinese patents: An empirical investigation of citation lags

China has been experiencing a substantial growth in patent applications. But is this increase accompanied by a similar increase in patent value? To assess this question, we examine the citation lag of Chinese patents as a proxy of patent value in comparison with patents from the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea. Our empirical analysis comprises a unique data set of 60,000 patents with priority years between 2000 and 2010. Utilizing Cox regressions, our results show that Chinese patents suffer from a large citation lag in comparison to international patents, indicating a lower value. This is especially true for patents filed domestically. However, we find empirical support for an increasing patent value in more recent patents. China shows a strong dynamic in the field of patenting and our results suggest that the gap between Chinese patents and international patents might narrow down in the near future.     

创新与经济增长:基于区域面板数据的bootsrtap格兰杰因果关系检验

以专利授权量作为创新产出指标,应用面板数据的bootstrap 格兰杰因果关系的Wald 检验方法,在似不相关回归系统下,检验了我国长三角地区专利与区域经济增长之间的格兰杰因果关系。研究结果表明,浙江和上海两省市发明专利与经济增长之间存在双向格兰杰因果关系,江苏省具有发明专利授权量对经济增长的单向因果关系,而安徽省两者之间不存在因果关系。另外,实用新型和外观设计专利与经济增长在所有省市都不存在任何方向的因果关系。     

基于专利技术宽度测度的外资在华合作专利价值研究——以生物技术领域为例

从专利价值的角度出发来看,较长的专利技术宽度意味着通过技术手段控制市场的能力较强,专利的价值也越高。本文应用专利技术宽度对外资在我国生物技术领域的专利申请进行测度,对比分析了外资合作申请与非合作申请专利价值,以及不同合作类型专利价值的区别,结论表明,合作型专利的价值较高,且企业间合作的专利价值较科研机构间合作的专利价值高。     

Technology transfer via foreign patents in Germany, 1843–77

This article analyses the spread of innovation in mid‐nineteenth‐century Germany using foreign patents as an indicator for technology transfer. It introduces a new dataset of over 1,400 patents granted in the Grand Duchy of Baden between 1843 and 1877. The data show that Baden's technology import via foreign patents from German and non‐German inventors was important. This technology transfer was broadly based, although technologies related to the textile and machine‐building industries are prominent in the data. The decision to file a patent in Baden was driven by competition and the risk of imitation. Using a gravity model with city‐level data, we find evidence that technology transfer through patents reflected existing trade links. The strong correlation between technologies filed by foreigners and domestic inventors provides further evidence that the risk of imitation fostered patent‐based technology transfer during the mid‐nineteenth century. Furthermore, we show that foreigners filed patents predominantly in industries that accounted for a high share of the workforce in Baden.     

Credit rationing and crowding out during the industrial revolution: evidence from Hoare’s Bank, 1702-1862

Crowding out during the British Industrial Revolution has long been one of the leading explanations for slow growth during the Industrial Revolution, but little empirical evidence exists to support it. We argue that examinations of interest rates are fundamentally misguided, and that the 18th- and early 19th-century private loan market balanced through quantity rationing. Using a unique set of observations on lending volume at a London goldsmith bank, Hoare’s Bank, we document the impact of wartime financing on private credit markets. We conclude that there is considerable evidence that government borrowing, especially during wartime, crowded out private credit.     

Trends and cycles in regional economic growth: How spatial differences shaped the Swedish growth experience from 1860–2009

Using a novel dataset of regional GDP per worker from 1860 to 2009, this paper analyzes communalities in regional long-term growth trajectories for 24 Swedish regions. Wavelet Analysis and Principal Component Analysis are used to decompose regional growth trajectories and assess the extent that regional growth patterns share common trends and cyclical properties. The study found that regional growth trends show strong common features among groups of regions in Sweden. Natural-resource-rich regions benefited from the First Industrial Revolution. Contrary to regional development in many other European economies, a growth surge in Sweden later benefited virtually the whole country during the Second Industrial Revolution. The countrywide trend of growth slowed in the 1970s when the metropolitan regions became the main growth engines. In mid- and short-term cyclical movements, regions display more heterogeneous growth patterns, and we find evidence of mid-term, sequential lead–lag patterns in regional growth, especially between urban cores and the periphery.     

The Role of Innovation in Upgrading in Global Value Chains

ABSTRACT

We examine the role of innovative efforts in industries from the perspective of global value chains (GVCs). We set up a simple model and empirically test it using patent and bilateral export decomposition data. The model shows that innovative activities assumed to decrease the cost of conducting high-skilled tasks can upgrade the position of the industry in GVCs. This is also supported by data on patents and GVC-related data from the OECD and the Asian Development Bank. The empirical results reveal that a higher number of patent applications are closely related to more production of intermediate goods rather than assembly.     

The growing dependence of Britain on trade during the Industrial Revolution

Many previous studies of the role of trade during the British Industrial Revolution have found little or no role for trade in explaining British living standards or growth rates. We construct a three-region model of the world in which Britain trades with North America and the Rest of the World, and calibrate the model to data from the 1760s and 1850s. We find that while trade had only a small impact on British welfare in the 1760s, it had a very large impact in the 1850s. This contrast is robust to a large range of parameter perturbations. Biased technological change and population growth were key in explaining Britain's growing dependence on trade during the Industrial Revolution.     

专利视域下全球人脸识别技术竞争和发展研究

以全球人脸识别专利为数据样本,综合运用专利价值度、有效量等指标,从全球专利现状、国家竞争力比较和风险识别方面展开分析,揭示我国人脸识别产业面临的风险,针对我国人脸识别产业在产业发展、专利布局、技术研究和风险预警等方面提出了具体建议。     

Factor prices and productivity growth during the British industrial revolution

This paper presents new estimates of total factor productivity growth in Britain for the period 1770-1860. We use the dual technique and argue that the estimates we derive from factor prices are of similar quality to quantity-based calculations. Our results provide further evidence, calculated on the basis of an independent set of sources, that productivity growth during the British Industrial Revolution was relatively slow. The Crafts-Harley view of the Industrial Revolution is thus reinforced. Our preferred estimates suggest a modest acceleration after 1800.     

The role of research and ownership collaboration in generating patent quality: China-U.S comparisons

This paper uses patent data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to investigate the association between inventor collaboration and joint assignee ownership, both domestic and international, and patent quality as measured by the number of claims and citations associated with a patent. Specifically, we compare the quality implications of research collaboration and joint patent ownership for the quality of U.S. and Chinese patents. Overall, we find that domestic inventor collaboration is associated with higher quality results for U.S. patents than Chinese patents. However, for China, international collaboration is associated with more positive quality outcomes; for U.S. patents, international collaboration implies lower quality than that associated with domestic U.S. collaboration. Part of this disparity is due to substantially different quality outcomes associated with joint U.S.-Chinese patents – quality gains for China and quality reductions for the U.S. We also investigate the quality implications of different organization-centered research, including dyadic and triadic collaborations, for patent quality as well as the quality implications of various assignee-inventor relationships, operating through incentive and scale effects. While most firms, particularly those in the U.S., appear to exploit advantages of fewer owner-assignees coordinating the scale benefits of more inventors, universities and research institutes in China appear to rely less on coordination-scale effects and more on the incentive effects associated with assigning patent ownership to inventors.     

Evaluating inventive activity: the cost of nineteenth-century UK patents and the fallibility of renewal data

It has long been recognized that counting patents offers a poor gauge of the extent and value of inventive activity, not least because the quality of patented inventions varies enormously. The Schankerman-Pakes model provides a valuable alternative gauge that utilizes the data from renewal fees which are regularly paid to keep a patent in force. This article suggests, however, that the model's application to nineteenth-century UK patents may underestimate the value of Victorian inventive activity because many patentees lacked the financial resources to implement the rational choice that the model assumes. Focusing on steam-engineering patents, it explores further problems with renewal data and the increasing rate of lapsed applications.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviews in This Article: Asian Village Economy at the Crossroads: An Economic Approach to Institutional Change. Transatlantic Industrial Revolution: The Diffusion of Textile Technologies between Britain and America, 1790–1830s.     

第三次工业革命驱动下的能源供给模式

从第一次工业革命和第二次工业革命期间集中式能源供给模式到1978年后分布式能源系统的推广,能源供给正在发生从集中到分散的变化,随着＂第三次工业革命＂的到来,分散式能源供给模式雏形已现。这种供给模式将在政治、经济、社会、思想意识、环境等方面促使未来经济社会发生革命性的变革。     

Innovation and Market Value in Newly-Industrialized Countries: The Case of Taiwanese Electronics Firms

The relationship between patents, research and development (R&D), and market value in newly industrialized countries is examined for a panel data of Taiwanese electronics firms. Empirical results show that the market value of electronics firms is strongly related to patent count and R&D expenditure in Taiwan. Controlling potential heterogeneity of patents and allowing the value of Tobin's q to vary across firms, the estimated results are quite consistent, which is encouraging for Taiwan's government as it has implemented many policies encouraging firms to commit to R&D. In addition, the significant and positive impact of the sales growth rate might refiect the expectation feature of the stock market.     

Broadband internet and enterprise innovation

Based on microdata from China's listed companies and macrodata for broadband internet access in prefecture-level cities, this paper explores the relationship between broadband internet and enterprise innovation. Using the change in market concentration caused by the North–South separation reform of China Telecom in 2002 as an instrumental variable, the results show that in general, a 1% increase in broadband internet access results in a 1.395% increase in the number of corporate patents. Specifically, the number of valid patents, patent citations and valid patent citations, reflecting patent quality, increases by 1.499%, 0.920% and 0.763%, respectively. The mechanistic analysis shows that broadband internet access contributes to increasing the number of R&D personnel and personal innovation efficiency, enhancing enterprises' willingness to innovate, and easing financing constraints. Further analysis suggests that broadband internet access mainly promotes invention patents rather than design patents. The innovation effect is more evident among high-tech, inventor-intensive, state-owned enterprises and enterprises located in the non-southeastern coastal region of China.     

财政科研项目管理政策对提升专利质量的影响及其机制研究

高质量专利是支撑国家实现创新发展的战略性资源。通过梳理专利质量、专利价值与科技创新活动的关系，明晰政府在提升专利质量中的定位和作用。基于基本政策工具和科技成果价值链构建二维分析框架，梳理评估现有政策及运行情况，研究影响科技创新产出专利质量的因素，找准制约提升科技创新专利质量的财政科技管理体制的瓶颈。为完善财政科技项目管理体制，提升专利质量提供具体的政策建议。     

Prizes,patents and the search for longitude

The 1714 Longitude Act created the Board of Longitude to administer a large monetary prize and progress payments for the precise determination of a ship's longitude. However, the prize did not prohibit patenting. We use a new dataset of marine chronometer inventors to show that the propensity to patent was high. We argue that while the prize spurred entry by key inventors, and progress payments facilitated research investment in an area of significant social value, patents promoted disclosure. Our findings highlight the importance of complementarities between prize and patent-based incentives in the design of innovation inducement contests.