Lens or Prism? A Comparative Assessment of Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research
Lens or Prism? A Comparative Assessment of Patent Citations as a Measure of Knowledge Flows from Public Research
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透镜还是棱镜？
DOI：
10.2139/ssrn.1911965
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发表时间：
2011
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Michael Roach Kenan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Michael Roach Kenan
在本文中，我们评估了公司反向专利引用的有效性和准确性，作为衡量公共研究知识流的一个指标（即，大学，政府和其他非营利研究），通过比较它们与基于调查的公共研究措施。采用一个新构建的数据集，匹配专利的调查数据在R&D实验室的水平，我们确定了测量误差的来源与专利和非专利参考文献的向后引用，分别。我们还认为，在一个简单的经验模型的产业创新绩效的知识流动的措施，在向后引用的潜在偏差的大小和方向。简而言之，我们发现专利引用错过了公共研究的知识流的大量内容，特别是那些倾向于更私人，基于合同和不成文的知识流。我们还表明，作为一个结果，衡量知识流与专利引用可能会导致大大低估的影响，公共研究对企业的创新绩效。然而，我们的分析还表明，在这两种类型的专利引用中，非专利引用（例如，期刊、会议等）是一个更好的衡量来自公共研究的知识的标准。
In this paper, we assess the validity and accuracy of firm backward patent citations as a measure of knowledge flows from public research (i.e., university, government and other nonprofit research) by comparing them to a survey-based measure of public research. Employing a newly constructed dataset that matches patents to survey data at the level of the R&D lab, we identify sources of measurement error associated with backward citations to both patent and nonpatent references, respectively. We also consider the magnitude and direction of potential bias in backward citations as a measure of knowledge flows in a simple empirical model of industrial innovative performance. In brief, we find that patent citations miss a good deal of the content of knowledge flows from public research, especially those flows that tend to be more private, contract-based and not codified. We also show that, as a consequence, measuring knowledge flows with patent citations can lead to a substantial underestimate of the effect of public research on firms’ innovative performance. However, our analysis also suggests that, of the two types of patent citations, nonpatent references (e.g., journals, conferences, etc.) are a better measure of knowledge originating from public research.