IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpdc/0411018.html

How Well Do Patent Citations Measure Flows of Technology? Evidence from French Innovation Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • DUGUET Emmanuel

    (EPEE - University of Evry)

  • MacGARVIE Megan

    (University of Boston)

Abstract

Patent citation data are used in a growing body of economics and business research on technological diffusion. Research in this area uses “backward” citations to measure technological knowledge acquired by the patenting entities studied. “Forward” citations (citations to the firm’s patents made by other patents) have been interpreted as a measure of the knowledge diffusing outward from the patenting entity. Until now, there exists little evidence on whether or not patent citations are a good measure of knowledge flows. Our paper assesses the legitimacy of using European patent citations as a measure of technology flows. It uses information from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) collected by the French Service des Statistiques Industrielles (SESSI), which contain firms’ responses to questions about their innovative activity. We show that patent citations are indeed related to firms’ statements about their acquisition and dispersion of new technology, but that the strength and statistical significance of this relationship varies across geographical regions and across channels of knowledge diffusion.

Suggested Citation

  • DUGUET Emmanuel & MacGARVIE Megan, 2004. "How Well Do Patent Citations Measure Flows of Technology? Evidence from French Innovation Surveys," Development and Comp Systems 0411018, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0411018
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 30
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/dev/papers/0411/0411018.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital
    • C35 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Multiple or Simultaneous Equation Models; Multiple Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions

    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:wpa:wuwpdc:0411018. 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: EconWPA The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask EconWPA to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    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.