IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jechis/v71y2011i04p1032-1059_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • NICHOLAS, TOM

Abstract

Matching 2,777 R&D firms in surveys conducted by the National Research Council between 1921 and 1938 with U.S. patents reveals that 59 percent of all firms and 88 percent of publicly traded firms patented. These shares are much higher than those observed for modern R&D firms. Industry, firm size and the location of R&D facilities relative to major cities are shown to be important determinants of the propensity to patent. The effect of these factors remained constant across the 1920s and the Depression years suggesting that the tradeoff between patent disclosure and secrecy did not change over time.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas, Tom, 2011. "Did R&D Firms Used to Patent? Evidence from the First Innovation Surveys," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(4), pages 1032-1059, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jechis:v:71:y:2011:i:04:p:1032-1059_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0022050711002233/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Andrews, Michael J. & Whalley, Alexander, 2022. "150 years of the geography of innovation," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    2. Filippo Mezzanotti & Timothy Simcoe, 2022. "Innovation and Appropriability: Revisiting the Role of Intellectual Property," Working Papers 22-09, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. Junghee Han & Almas Heshmati, 2021. "Innovation and SMEs patent propensity in Korea," International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 42(1/2), pages 51-68.
    4. Nanda, Ramana & Nicholas, Tom, 2014. "Did bank distress stifle innovation during the Great Depression?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(2), pages 273-292.
    5. Fontana, Roberto & Nuvolari, Alessandro & Shimizu, Hiroshi & Vezzulli, Andrea, 2013. "Reassessing patent propensity: Evidence from a dataset of R&D awards, 1977–2004," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(10), pages 1780-1792.
    6. Juana Sanchez, 2014. "Innovation Output Choices And Characteristics Of Firms In The U.S," Working Papers 14-42, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    7. Juana Sanchez, 2014. "Non-technological and Mixed Modes of Innovation in the United States. Evidence from the Business Research and Development and Innovation Survey, 2008-2011," Working Papers 14-35, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    8. Billington, Stephen D. & Hanna, Alan J., 2018. "That's classified! Inventing a new patent taxonomy," QUCEH Working Paper Series 2018-06, Queen's University Belfast, Queen's University Centre for Economic History.
    9. Sizhong Sun & Sajid Anwar, 2018. "Product innovation in China’s food processing industries," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 42(3), pages 492-507, July.
    10. Junghee Han, 2017. "Technology Commercialization through Sustainable Knowledge Sharing from University-Industry Collaborations, with a Focus on Patent Propensity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-16, October.

    More about this item

    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:cup:jechis:v:71:y:2011:i:04:p:1032-1059_00. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/jeh .

    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.