Research Scientist Productivity and Firm Size: Evidence from Panel Data on Investors

It has long been recognized that worker wages and possibly productivity are higher in large firms. Moreover, at least since Schumpeter (1942) economists have been interested in the relative efficiency of large firms in the research and development enterprise. This paper uses longitudinal worker-firm-matched data to examine the relationship between the productivity of workers specifically engaged in innovation and firm size in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries. In both industries, we find that inventors' productivity increases with firm size. This result holds across different specifications and even after controlling for inventors' experience, education, the quality of other inventors in the firm, and other firm characteristics. We find evidence in the pharmaceutical industry that this is partly accounted for by differences between how large and small firms organize R&D activities.Patents; Innovation; Labor productivity; Research; Firm size

International Knowledge Flows: Evidence from an Inventor-Firm Matched Data Set

We describe the construction of a panel data set from the U.S. patent data that contains measures of inventors' life-cycle R&D productivity--patents and patent citations. We match the data set to information on the U.S. pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms for whom they work. In this paper we use these data to examine the role of research personnel as a pathway for the diffusion of ideas from foreign countries to U.S. innovators. In particular, we find in recent years an increase in the extent that U.S. innovating firms collaborate with or employ researchers with foreign experience. This increase appears to work primarily through an increase in U.S. firms' employment of foreign-residing researchers; the fraction of research-active U.S. residents with foreign research experience appears to be falling, suggesting that U.S. pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms are increasingly locating operations in foreign countries to employ such researchers, as opposed to such researchers immigrating to the U.S. to work. In addition, we investigate which U.S. firms conducting R&D build upon innovations originating abroad. We find that employing or collaborating with researchers who have research experience abroad seems to facilitate the use of output of non-U.S. R&D. We also find that in the semiconductor industry smaller and older firms, and in the pharmaceutical industry, younger firms are more likely to access foreign R&D output.

The Influence of University Research on Industrial Innovation

We use U.S. patent records to examine the role of research personnel as a pathway for the diffusion of ideas from university to industry. Appearing on a patent assigned to a university is evidence that an inventor has been exposed to university research, either directly as a university researcher or through some form of collaboration with university researchers. Having an advanced degree is another indicator of an inventor's exposure to university research. We find a steady increase in industry's use of inventors with university research experience over the period 1985-97, economy wide and in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries in particular. We interpret this as evidence of growth in the influence of university research on industrial innovation. Moreover, during this period we find that firms with large research operations in both industries, and young and highly capitalized firms in the pharmaceutical industry, are disproportionately active in the diffusion of ideas from the university sector. Finally, we find that the patents of firms that employ inventors with university research experience are more likely to cite university patents as prior art, suggesting that this experience better enables firms to tap academic research.

credit, including © notice, is given to the source. International Knowledge Flows: Evidence from an Inventor-Firm Matched Data Set

JEL No. J62,O31,O33 We describe the construction of a panel data set from the U.S. patent data that contains measures of inventors ' life-cycle R&D productivity--patents and patent citations. We match the data set to information on the U.S. pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms for whom they work. In this paper we use these data to examine the role of research personnel as a pathway for the diffusion of ideas from foreign countries to U.S. innovators. In particular, we find in recent years an increase in the extent that U.S. innovating firms collaborate with or employ researchers with foreign experience. This increase appears to work primarily through an increase in U.S. firms ' employment of foreign-residing researchers; the fraction of research-active U.S. residents with foreign research experience appears to be falling, suggesting that U.S. pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms are increasingly locating operations in foreign countries to employ such researchers, as opposed to such researchers immigrating to the U.S. to work. In addition, we investigate which U.S. firms conducting R&D build upon innovations originating abroad. We find that employing or collaborating with researchers who have research experience abroad seems to facilitate the use of output of non-U.S. R&D. We also find that in the semiconductor industry smaller and olde

International Knowledge Flows: Evidence from an Inventor-Firm Matched Data Set

We describe the construction of a panel data set from the U.S. patent data that contains measures of inventors?life-cycle R&D productivity--patents and patent citations. We match the data set to information on the U.S. pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms for whom they work. In this paper we use these data to examine the role of research personnel as a pathway for the diffusion of ideas from foreign countries to U.S. innovators. In particular, we find in recent years an increase in the extent that U.S. innovating firms collaborate with or employ researchers with foreign experience. This increase appears to work primarily through an increase in U.S. firms?employment of foreign-residing researchers; the fraction of research-active U.S. residents with foreign research experience appears to be falling, suggesting that U.S. pharmaceutical and semiconductor firms are increasingly locating operations in foreign countries to employ such researchers, as opposed to such researchers immigrating to the U.S. to work. In addition, we investigate which U.S. firms conducting R&D build upon innovations originating abroad. We find that employing or collaborating with researchers who have research experience abroad seems to facilitate the use of output of non-U.S. R&D. We also find that in the semiconductor industry smaller and older firms, and in the pharmaceutical industry, younger firms are more likely to access foreign R&D output.Innovation; Technology spillovers

Research Scientist Productivity and Firm Size: Evidence from Panel Data on Inventors

It has long been recognized that worker wages and possibly productivity are higher in large firms. Moreover, at least since Schumpeter (1942) economists have been interested in the relative efficiency of large firms in the research and development enterprise. This paper uses longitudinal worker-firm-matched data to examine the relationship between the productivity of workers specifically engaged in innovation and firm size in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries. In both industries, we find that inventors?productivity increases with firm size. This result holds across different specifications and even after controlling for inventors?experience, education, the quality of other inventors in the firm, and other firm characteristics. We find evidence in the pharmaceutical industry that this is partly accounted for by differences between how large and small firms organize R&D activities.Patents, Innovation, Labor productivity, Research, Firm size

Relation of Firm Size to R&D Productivity *

Many studies have shown that small firms generate more patents per R&D dollar than large firms. Does this mean that small firms are more efficient innovators than large firms? In this paper we exploit a unique data set to reexamine the firm size-innovation relationship. Because firm-reported R&D expenditures may be a biased measure of R&D activities due to underreporting by small firms, we use the number of inventors in the firm’s employ as a measure of R&D inputs. We focus on the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries, two industries that are prolific generators of homogenous innovations. As has been found elsewhere in the literature, we find that patents per R&D dollar decline with firm size for both industries. This contrasts with the relationship between patents per inventor and firm size. The average number of patents per inventor increases with size in the semiconductor industry. In the pharmaceutical industry, we show no relationship between the number of patents produced per inventor and firm size

INVENTOR PRODUCTIVITY AND FIRM SIZE: EVIDENCE FROM PANEL DATA ON INVENTORS

It has long been recognized that worker wages and productivity are higher in large firms. Moreover, economists have been interested in the efficiency of large firms in R&D enterprises. This paper uses inventor panel data to examine the relationship between inventor productivity and firm size in the pharmaceutical and semiconductor industries. In both industries, we find that inventors' productivity increases with firm size even after controlling for inventors' experience, education and other firm characteristics. We find evidence in the pharmaceutical industry that this is partly accounted for by differences in the way in which large and small firms organize R&D activities. Copyright 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd

Impact of University Scientists on Innovations in Nanotechnology

Using U.S. patent records in nanotechnoloy, we study the impact of university research on industry innovations with the premise that knowledge is diffused from universities to industry via personnel with university research experience. Appearing on a patent assigned to a university is evidence that an inventor has been exposed to university research, either directly as a university researcher or through some from of collaboration with university researchers. Over the period 1985-97, we find a steady increase in industry's employment of inventors with university research experience. In the 1990s we find the productivity (in terms of patenting rates and patent quality) of inventors with university backgrounds begins to exceed the productivity of the inventors without such experience. We also find that the share of industry patents in nanotechnology that cite university-assigned patents almost doubles during the period and inventors with university experience cite mostly university patents not invented by them, implying that they are instrumental in transferring general knowledge created throughout the university community.Nanotechnology, Patents; Innovations; Knowledge spillovers; University research