Invention in the city: Increasing returns to patenting as a scaling function of metropolitan size
Invention in the city: Increasing returns to patenting as a scaling function of metropolitan size
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DOI：
10.1016/j.respol.2006.09.026
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发表时间：
2007-02-01
期刊：
影响因子：
7.2
通讯作者：
Strumsky, Deborah
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bettencourt, Luis M. A.;Lobo, Jose;Strumsky, Deborah
我们调查了过去二十年（1980-2001年）美国大都市地区的专利活动和人口规模之间的关系。我们发现了一个明显的超线性效应，即新的专利在较大的城市中心不成比例地授予，从而显示出相对于人口规模的发明活动的回报增加。我们定量地描述了这种关系作为一个指数大于单位的幂律。这一现象与大都市地区大量发明家的存在是相称的，我们发现这与人口数量呈类似的超线性关系，而个人发明家的生产率在大都市地区基本保持不变。我们还发现，专利合作网络的结构措施，虽然弱相关性专利申请率的增加，是不足以解释它们。最后，我们发现，研发机构和就业在其他创造性的职业也遵循超线性缩放关系的大都市人口规模，虽然可能有不同的指数。(c)2006 Elsevier B. V.保留所有权利。
We investigate the relationship between patenting activity and the population size of metropolitan areas in the United States over the last two decades (1980-2001). We find a clear superlinear effect, whereby new patents are granted disproportionately in larger urban centers, thus showing increasing returns in inventing activity with respect to population size. We characterize this relation quantitatively as a power law with an exponent larger than unity. This phenomenon is commensurate with the presence of larger numbers of inventors in larger metropolitan areas, which we find follows a quantitatively similar superlinear relationship to population, while the productivity of individual inventors stays essentially constant across metropolitan areas. We also find that structural measures of the patent co-authorship network although weakly correlated to increasing rates of patenting, are not enough to explain them. Finally, we show that R&D establishments and employment in other creative professions also follow superlinear scaling relations to metropolitan population size, albeit possibly with different exponents. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.