IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tky/fseres/2003cf217.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Patent Activity and Technical Change

Author

Listed:
  • Robert L. Basmann

    (Department of Economics, Binghamton University)

  • Michael McAleer

    (Department of Economics, University of Western Australia)

  • Daniel Slottje

    (Department of Economics, Southern Methodist University)

Abstract

This paper presents an aggregate production function of the generalized Fechner-Thurstone (GFT) form to analyze the impact of an important component of intellectual industrial property, namely patent activity, on technical change in the USA for the period 1947-1981. We define a technology-changer as a variable that has an impact on the elasticity of the marginal rate of technical substitution (mrts) between inputs of the GFT production function over time. Various types of US patent grant activity, specifically total, domestic, foreign, successful and unsuccessful patents, are used as instruments for the technology-changer. Using the GFT specification, the impacts of various technology-changers on the elasticity of the mrts between inputs are estimated directly. It is found that granted (or successful) patents, patents granted to foreign companies and individuals, total patent applications, and even unsuccessful patent applications, have significant impacts on the rates at which inputs are substituted for each other over time in production.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert L. Basmann & Michael McAleer & Daniel Slottje, 2003. "Patent Activity and Technical Change," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-217, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    • Handle: RePEc:tky:fseres:2003cf217
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/dp/2003/2003cf217.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fagerberg, Jan, 1987. "A technology gap approach to why growth rates differ," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(2-4), pages 87-99, August.
    2. Zvi Griliches, 1998. "Productivity, R&D, and Basic Research at the Firm Level in the 1970s," NBER Chapters, in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 82-99, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Basmann, R L & Molina, D J & Slottje, D J, 1983. "Budget Constraint Prices as Preference Changing Parameters of Generalized Fechner-Thurstone Direct Utility Functions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 411-413, June.
    4. Schankerman, Mark & Pakes, Ariel, 1986. "Estimates of the Value of Patent Rights in European Countries during the Post-1950 Period," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 96(384), pages 1052-1076, December.
    5. Jaffe, Adam B., 2000. "The U.S. patent system in transition: policy innovation and the innovation process," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4-5), pages 531-557, April.
    6. McAleer, Michael & Chan, Felix & Marinova, Dora, 2007. "An econometric analysis of asymmetric volatility: Theory and application to patents," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 259-284, August.
    7. Arora, Ashish, 1996. "Contracting for tacit knowledge: the provision of technical services in technology licensing contracts," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 233-256, August.
    8. Daniel J. Wilson, 2002. "Is Embodied Technology the Result of Upstream R&D? Industry-Level Evidence," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 5(2), pages 285-317, April.
    9. Jean O. Lanjouw & Ariel Pakes & Jonathan Putnam, 1998. "How to Count Patents and Value Intellectual Property: The Uses of Patent Renewal and Application Data," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(4), pages 405-432, December.
    10. McAleer, Michael, 2005. "Automated Inference And Learning In Modeling Financial Volatility," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 232-261, February.
    11. Newey, Whitney & West, Kenneth, 2014. "A simple, positive semi-definite, heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 33(1), pages 125-132.
    12. Basmann, R. L. & Hayes, K. J. & Slottje, D. J. & Molina, D. J., 1987. "A new method for measuring technological change," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 329-333.
    13. McAleer, Michael, 1994. "Sherlock Holmes and the Search for Truth: A Diagnostic Tale," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(4), pages 317-370, December.
    14. Zoltan J. Acs & Luc Anselin & Attila Varga, 2008. "Patents and Innovation Counts as Measures of Regional Production of New Knowledge," Chapters, in: Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy, chapter 11, pages 135-151, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    15. Nancy T. Gallini, 2002. "The Economics of Patents: Lessons from Recent U.S. Patent Reform," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(2), pages 131-154, Spring.
    16. Pakes, Ariel, 1985. "On Patents, R&D, and the Stock Market Rate of Return," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(2), pages 390-409, April.
    17. repec:bla:jindec:v:46:y:1998:i:4:p:405-32 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Pakes, Ariel S, 1986. "Patents as Options: Some Estimates of the Value of Holding European Patent Stocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(4), pages 755-784, July.
    19. Carlaw, Kenneth I. & Lipsey, Richard G., 2002. "Externalities, technological complementarities and sustained economic growth," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(8-9), pages 1305-1315, December.
    20. Furman, Jeffrey L. & Porter, Michael E. & Stern, Scott, 2002. "The determinants of national innovative capacity," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 899-933, August.
    21. Berndt, Ernst R & Wood, David O, 1975. "Technology, Prices, and the Derived Demand for Energy," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 57(3), pages 259-268, August.
    22. Jean-Pierre Benoit, 1985. "Innovation and Imitation in a Duopoly," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(1), pages 99-106.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michalski, Tomasz, 2012. "Input substitutability, trade costs and location," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(1), pages 57-59.
    2. Oh, Donghyun & Heshmati, Almas & Lööf, Hans, 2014. "Total factor productivity of Korean manufacturing industries: Comparison of competing models with firm-level data," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 25-36.
    3. Alejandro Barragán-Ocaña & Gerardo Reyes-Ruiz & Samuel Olmos-Peña & Hortensia Gómez-Viquez, 2020. "Approach to the identification of an alternative technological innovation index," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(1), pages 23-45, January.
    4. Yongli Zhang & Sanggyun Na & Jianguang Niu & Beichen Jiang, 2018. "The Influencing Factors, Regional Difference and Temporal Variation of Industrial Technology Innovation: Evidence with the FOA-GRNN Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-19, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arora, Ashish & Ceccagnoli, Marco & Cohen, Wesley M., 2008. "R&D and the patent premium," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(5), pages 1153-1179, September.
    2. Slottje, Daniel J. & Millimet, Daniel L. & Buchanan, Michael J., 2007. "Econometric analysis of copyrights," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 139(2), pages 303-317, August.
    3. Gaétan de Rassenfosse & Adam B. Jaffe, 2018. "Are patent fees effective at weeding out low‐quality patents?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(1), pages 134-148, March.
    4. Austin, David H., 2000. "Patents, Spillovers, and Competition in Biotechnology," Discussion Papers 10808, Resources for the Future.
    5. Yipeng Zhang, 2023. "The Sustainability of Regional Innovation in China: Insights from Regional Innovation Values and Their Spatial Distribution," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-42, June.
    6. Encaoua, David & Guellec, Dominique & Martinez, Catalina, 2006. "Patent systems for encouraging innovation: Lessons from economic analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 1423-1440, November.
    7. Alexandre Almeida & Aurora A.C. Teixeira, 2007. "Does Patenting negatively impact on R&D investment?An international panel data assessment," FEP Working Papers 255, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    8. L. Kamran Bilir, 2014. "Patent Laws, Product Life-Cycle Lengths, and Multinational Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 1979-2013, July.
    9. Mark A. Lemley & Carl Shapiro, 2005. "Probabilistic Patents," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 75-98, Spring.
    10. Esfandiar Maasoumi & Almas Heshmati & Inhee Lee, 2021. "Green innovations and patenting renewable energy technologies," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 513-538, January.
    11. Cohen, Wesley M., 2010. "Fifty Years of Empirical Studies of Innovative Activity and Performance," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 129-213, Elsevier.
    12. Nicolas van Zeebroeck, 2011. "Long Live Patents: the Increasing Life Expectancy of Patent Applications and its Determinants," Review of Economics and Institutions, Università di Perugia, vol. 2(3).
    13. Carlos J. Serrano, 2010. "The dynamics of the transfer and renewal of patents," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(4), pages 686-708, December.
    14. Marc Baudry & Adrien Hervouet, 2017. "The private value of plant variety protection and the impact of exemption rules," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(3), pages 202-226, April.
    15. Koo, Bonwoo & Pardey, Philip G. & Qian, Keming & Zhang, Yi, 2003. "The economics of generating and maintaining plant variety rights in China:," EPTD discussion papers 100, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    16. Roy Cerqueti & Marco Ventura, 2009. "A Discrete Model for Patent Valuation," ISAE Working Papers 120, ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY).
    17. Hall, Bronwyn H. & Mairesse, Jacques & Mohnen, Pierre, 2010. "Measuring the Returns to R&D," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1033-1082, Elsevier.
    18. Hellmann, Thomas, 2007. "The role of patents for bridging the science to market gap," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 63(4), pages 624-647, August.
    19. Stuart J. H. Graham & Alan C. Marco & Amanda F. Myers, 2018. "Patent transactions in the marketplace: Lessons from the USPTO Patent Assignment Dataset," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 343-371, September.
    20. Schwiebacher, Franz, 2013. "Does fragmented or heterogeneous IP ownership stifle investments in innovation?," ZEW Discussion Papers 13-096, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D24 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production
    • K1 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:tky:fseres:2003cf217. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CIRJE administrative office (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ritokjp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.