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on Innovation |
| By: | Antonin Bergeaud; Julia Schmidt; Riccardo Zago |
| Abstract: | Technology standards are defined by national and international organizations to select and disseminate the best technologies and practices. Using a measure of patent quality and a novel measure of the semantic proximity between patents and standards documents, this paper exploits the standardization process to disentangle the respective contributions of innovation and diffusion to firm value. Producing a patent increases a firm’s book value by 0.8% over the first eight years following the patent grant. However, this value deteriorates when the patent is not incorporated into a standard and diffused. In contrast, only firms whose patent specifications are included in a standard experience an additional increase in firm value of about 0.4% thereafter. Similar results are obtained when examining firms’ market-value and net worth. Finally, by studying firm-level productivity and markups, we show that the value gains associated with innovation stem from productivity improvements, whereas those associated with diffusion arise from rent extraction. |
| Keywords: | Standardization, Patents, Innovation, Firm Value |
| JEL: | G30 O31 O33 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfr:banfra:1031 |
| By: | Jingni Zhang; David Popp |
| Abstract: | Electric vehicles (EVs) are crucial for cutting transportation emissions, yet the policy drivers of EV innovation remain underexplored. This study analyzes firm-level panel data on EV and battery patents, covering more than 4, 000 firms across 19 countries from 2010 to 2021, to assess how these policy tools and their interactions in different time horizons influence innovative activity. We test the effects of individual policy instruments that either raise demand for EVs or support the development of EV technologies. Stringent fuel-economy standards, financial incentives, adoption targets, and public R&D investments each significantly increase patenting in EV and battery technologies. Moreover, long-term EV targets amplify the innovative impact of public R&D and standards while diminishing the marginal effect of short-term price signals. The results suggest that governments can accelerate clean automotive innovation by combining long-term adoption commitments with sustained R&D investment or strong performance standards, and by managing these instruments as a coordinated policy portfolio rather than as separate tools. The study contributes cross-country, firm-level evidence that links policy design to the direction of clean technology innovation. |
| JEL: | O31 O38 Q55 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34763 |
| By: | Antonin Bergeaud; Ruveyda Nur Gozen; John Van Reenen |
| Abstract: | We introduce a methodology to measure cross-country trends in innovation capability - “technological trajectories” and implement this on a new rich dataset covering patents between 1836 and 2016 across multiple countries. Intuitively, trajectories are revealed by a country’s sustained increases in patenting across multiple patent offices. We first describe the data patterns, showing the relative decline of the UK, and the rise first of the US and Germany, and then later of Japan and China. We then econometrically estimate trajectories on (i) the post-1902 period for France, Germany, Japan, the UK and US, and (ii) the post-1960 period for a wider sample of 40 countries. Our trajectories are strongly positively correlated with Total Factor Productivity growth, and also (but less strongly) associated with the growth of labour productivity and capital intensity. We show that future trajectories are predicted by a country’s initial levels of R&D, education and defence spending, classic drivers of innovation in modern growth theory. |
| JEL: | O31 O33 O34 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34760 |
| By: | Michael Balzer; Adhen Benlahlou |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a theory of scientific and technological peer effects to study how individuals' productivity responds to the behavior and network positions of their collaborators across both scientific and inventive activities. Building on a simultaneous equation network framework, the model predicts that productivity in each activity increases in a variation of the Katz-Bonacich centrality that captures within-activity and cross-activity strategic complementarities. To test these predictions, we assemble the universe of cancer-related publications and patents and construct coauthorship and coinventorship networks that jointly map the collaboration structure of researchers active in both spheres. Using an instrumental-variables approach based on predicted link formation from exogenous dyadic characteristics, and incorporating community fixed effects to address endogenous network formation, we show that both authors' and inventors' outputs rise with their network centrality, consistent with the theory. Moreover, scientific productivity significantly enhances technological productivity, while technological output does not exert a detectable reciprocal effect on scientific production, highlighting an asymmetric linkage aligned with a science-driven model of innovation. These findings provide the first empirical evidence on the joint dynamics of scientific and inventive peer effects, underscore the micro-foundations of the co-evolution of science and technology, and reveal how collaboration structures can be leveraged to design policies that enhance collective knowledge creation and downstream innovation. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2602.02403 |
| By: | Bastianin, Andrea; Castelnovo, Paolo; Frattini, Federico Fabio; Vona, Francesco |
| Abstract: | This paper develops a novel text-based approach to identify CRM-saving innovation using patent data and studies how mineral price signals shape the direction of technological change. Using patent data from 1978–2020, we distinguish technologies that rely on CRMs from those that explicitly aim to reduce their use through efficiency improvements, substitution, or recycling. We provide evidence consistent with the induced-innovation hypothesis: higher mineral prices reallocate inventive effort toward CRM-saving technologies, while having little effect on CRM-reliant innovation. The response strengthens over time and is especially pronounced for battery minerals and rare earth elements. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and are reinforced by complementary identification strategies, including a falsification test and the use of plausibly exogenous supply-side price variation. |
| Keywords: | Climate Change, Environmental Economics and Policy, Resource/Energy Economics and Policy, Sustainability |
| Date: | 2026–01–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:feemwp:391378 |
| By: | Philipp Jonas Kreutzer; Josef Taalbi |
| Abstract: | Collaboration is expected to play a central role in the transition to a bioeconomy - a central pillar of a green economy. Such collaboration is supposed to connect traditional biomass processing firms with diverse actors in fields where biomass ought to substitute existing or create novel products and processes. This study analyzes the network of technology collaborations among innovating firms in Sweden between 1970 and 2021. The results reveal generally positive associations between direct and indirect ties, with meaningful increases in innovation output for each additional direct collaboration partner. Relationships between brokerage positions and innovation output were statistically insignificant, and cognitive proximity - while following theoretical expectations - materially insignificant. These associations are mostly equal between actors heavily invested in the bioeconomy and those focusing on other innovation areas, indicating that these actors operate under largely similar mechanisms linking collaboration and subsequent innovation output. These results suggest that stimulating collaboration broadly - rather than attempting to optimize collaboration compositions - could result in higher number of significant Swedish innovations, for bioeconomy and other sectors alike. |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2602.05112 |
| By: | Kyle Higham (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research); Hannah Kotula (Motu Economic and Public Policy Research); Emma Scharfmann (University of California, Berkeley); Steve Gong (Google); Gaétan de Rassenfosse (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) |
| Abstract: | We present a curated dataset of about 850, 000 citations extracted from Office Actions issued by examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. These references, historically underused due to accessibility challenges, provide a granular view into the patent examination process and complement traditional front-page citation data. We classify each citation into one of 14 categories and focus on the 265, 000 references to scientific literature, which we parse, clean, and disambiguate using machine learning and external bibliographic services. To enhance reusability, disambiguated records are linked to OpenAlex, a comprehensive research metadata platform. The dataset enables new research on examiner behavior, science–technology linkages, and the construction of citation-based metrics. All data and code are openly available to facilitate reuse across disciplines. |
| Keywords: | citation; patent; office actions; open data; non-patent literature; NPL |
| JEL: | O34 K29 D83 C81 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iip:wpaper:31 |
| By: | Seong-Young Kim (Rennes SB - Rennes School of Business); Phillip H Kim |
| Abstract: | We study how and why firms shift their interfirm network positions during the routinized regime of a mature high-technology industry. Firms seek benefits from network positions (structural holes or centrality) by forming alliances that move them into these positions and increase their innovation performance. However, during the routinized technology regime, inertia impedes such movements, leading firms a dilemma: whether to continue shifting between two network positions and determine if such shifts yield better outcomes. We analyzed firm network positioning behavior in the semiconductor industry from 1991-2007. Our findings indicate that firms shift toward more central positions, which, in turn, improves innovation performance. These results explain how firms actively shape their network strategy when external conditions discourage such shifts. |
| Keywords: | semiconductor industry, routinized technology regime, high-technology industries, innovation performance, interfirm network positioning |
| Date: | 2025–10 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05410602 |
| By: | Schmal, W. Benedikt |
| Abstract: | Can monopoly rents fuel innovation or do they entrench dominance? This paper explores the tension between two competing visions of antitrust: the US model, which rewards entrepreneurial disruption through monopoly rents, and the EU model, which aims to prevent gatekeeping by preserving structural competition. At the heart of this debate lies the distinction between circumvention innovation, where challengers bypass incumbents with radical new paradigms, and gatekeeper regulation, which enforces contestability within existing markets. While the US approach has produced breakthrough innovations, it depends on open access to capital, talent, and markets, i.e., conditions increasingly threatened by geopolitical fragmentation and economic decoupling. In contrast, the EU's more restrained model may lack raw disruptive power, but appears more resilient in the face of shocks. This paper argues that antitrust must evolve: resilient innovation requires not just market incentives, but institutional frameworks capable of withstanding a more fractured global economy. |
| Abstract: | Können Monopolrenten Innovation fördern oder zementieren sie lediglich Marktmacht? Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Spannungen zwischen zwei konkurrierenden wettbewerbspolitischen Modellen: dem US-amerikanischen Ansatz, der unternehmerische Disruption durch Monopolgewinne belohnt, und dem europäischen Modell, das durch strukturelle Wettbewerbssicherung gezielt Gatekeeping verhindern will. Im Zentrum steht der Gegensatz zwischen Umgehungsinnovation, bei der Herausforderer etablierte Firmen mit radikal neuen Ansätzen umgehen, und Gatekeeper-Regulierung, die Wettbewerb innerhalb bestehender Märkte durchsetzt. Während der US-Ansatz disruptive Innovationen hervorgebracht hat, beruht er auf offenen Kapital-, Personal- und Absatzmärkten, also Voraussetzungen, die zunehmend durch geopolitische Fragmentierung und wirtschaftliche Entkopplung bedroht sind. Demgegenüber mag das europäische Modell weniger auf Durchbruchsinnovationen ausgerichtet sein, scheint jedoch widerstandsfähiger gegenüber externen Schocks. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass sich die Wettbewerbspolitik weiterentwickeln muss: Resiliente Innovation benötigt nicht nur Marktanreize, sondern auch institutionelle Rahmenbedingungen, die in einer fragmentierten Weltwirtschaft tragfähig bleiben. |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:lefpps:336634 |
| By: | Martin Beraja; Francisco J. Buera |
| Abstract: | Are competition policies designed for static industries suitable for innovative industries where dynamic competition for the market is key? If not, how should policies differ? We develop a model of the life-cycle of an oligopolistic industry: a version of Jovanovic and MacDonald (1994) with a finite number of firms. The equilibrium features a period of intense entry, followed by a shakeout and eventual industry concentration as some firms scale through innovation while most exit. We analyze the second-best problem of a government subsidizing small firms to promote competition. Innovation and dynamic competition do not necessarily justify intervention, as the equilibrium can still be second best. In general, the optimal policy depends on the nature of competition. Firms primarily compete for the market when innovation leads to large differences in scale. The government can wait to intervene in this case; committing to do whatever it takes to promote competition if and when the industry concentrates excessively. Subsidies early in the life-cycle are unnecessary. These results contrast with calls for aggressive ex-ante regulation in highly innovative industries, suggesting a wait-and-see approach may be preferable. We apply these insights to digital and AI industries in the U.S. using data on venture-backed firms. |
| JEL: | E0 L0 O3 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34770 |