| Abstract: |
International technological diffusion is a key determinant of cross-country
differences in economic performance. While patents can be a useful proxy for
innovation and technological change and diffusion, fully exploiting patent
data for such economic analyses requires patents to be tied to measures of
economic activity. In this paper, we describe and explore a new algorithmic
approach to constructing concordances between the International Patent
Classification (IPC) system that organizes patents by technical features and
industry classification systems that organize economic data, such as the
Standard International Trade Classification (SITC), the International Standard
Industrial Classification (ISIC) and the Harmonized System (HS). This
‘Algorithmic Links with Probabilities’ (ALP) approach incorporates text
analysis software and keyword extraction programs and applies them to a
comprehensive patent dataset. We compare the results of several ALP
concordances to existing technology concordances. Based on these comparisons,
we select a preferred ALP approach and discuss advantages of this approach
relative to conventional approaches. We conclude with a discussion on some of
the possible applications of the concordance and provide a sample analysis
that uses our preferred ALP concordance to analyze international patent flows
based on trade patterns. |