The "Names Game": Harnessing Inventors' Patent Data for Economic Research

The goal of this paper is to lay out a methodology and corresponding computer algorithms, that allow us to extract the detailed data on inventors contained in patents, and harness it for economic research. Patent data has long been used in empirical research in economics, and yet the information on the identity (i.e. the names and location) of the patents’ inventors has seldom been deployed in a large scale, primarily because of the “who is who” problem: the name of a given inventor may be spelled differently across her/his patents, and the exact same name may correspond to different inventors (i.e. the “John Smith” problem). Given that there are over 2 million patents with 2 inventors per patent on average, the “who is who” problem applies to over 4 million “records”, which is obviously too large to tackle manually. We have thus developed an elaborate methodology and computerized procedure to address this problem in a comprehensive way. The end result is a list of 1.6 million unique inventors from all over the world, with detailed data on their patenting histories, their employers, co-inventors, etc. Forty percent of them have more than one patent, and 70,000 have more than 10 patents. We can trace those multiple inventors across time and space, and thus study the causes and consequences of their mobility across countries, regions, and employers. Given the increasing availability of large computerized data sets on individuals, there may be plenty of opportunities to deploy this methodology to other areas of economic research as well.

The ˆNames Game˜: Harnessing Inventors Patent Data for Economic Research

The goal of this paper is to lay out a methodology and corresponding computer algorithms, that allow us to extract the detailed data on inventors contained in patents, and harness it for economic research. Patent data has long been used in empirical research in economics, and yet the information on the identity (i.e. the names and location) of the patents’ inventors has seldom been deployed in a large scale, primarily because of the “who is who” problem: the name of a given inventor may be spelled differently across her/his patents, and the exact same name may correspond to different inventors (i.e. the “John Smith” problem). Given that there are over 2 million patents with 2 inventors per patent on average, the “who is who” problem applies to over 4 million “records”, which is obviously too large to tackle manually. We have thus developed an elaborate methodology and computerized procedure to address this problem in a comprehensive way. The end result is a list of 1.6 million unique inventors from all over the world, with detailed data on their patenting histories, their employers, co-inventors, etc. Forty percent of them have more than one patent, and 70,000 have more than 10 patents. We can trace those multiple inventors across time and space, and thus study the causes and consequences of their mobility across countries, regions, and employers. Given the increasing availability of large computerized data sets on individuals, there may be plenty of opportunities to deploy this methodology to other areas of economic research as well

The 'Names Game': Harnessing Inventors Patent Data for Economic Research

The goal of this paper is to lay out a methodology and corresponding computer algorithms, that allow us to extract the detailed data on inventors contained in patents, and harness it for economic research. Patent data has long been used in empirical research in economics, and yet the information on the identity (i.e. the names and location) of the patents’ inventors has seldom been deployed in a large scale, primarily because of the “who is who” problem: the name of a given inventor may be spelled differently across her/his patents, and the exact same name may correspond to different inventors (i.e. the “John Smith” problem). Given that there are over 2 million patents with 2 inventors per patent on average, the “who is who” problem applies to over 4 million “records”, which is obviously too large to tackle manually. We have thus developed an elaborate methodology and computerized procedure to address this problem in a comprehensive way. The end result is a list of 1.6 million unique inventors from all over the world, with detailed data on their patenting histories, their employers, co-inventors, etc. Forty percent of them have more than one patent, and 70,000 have more than 10 patents. We can trace those multiple inventors across time and space, and thus study the causes and consequences of their mobility across countries, regions, and employers. Given the increasing availability of large computerized data sets on individuals, there may be plenty of opportunities to deploy this methodology to other areas of economic research as well.computer software; inventors; mobility; patents

Together but Apart: ICT and Productivity Growth in Israel

There is widespread agreement about the important role played by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in the US productivity revival and in the evolving US-EU productivity gap. In Israel, the ICT sector grew very rapidly during the 1990s and became a hotbed of innovation and technological advance by worldwide standards. Yet, Israel's overall productivity growth remained sluggish, with traditional sectors both in manufacturing and services seemingly unable to benefit from the success of the ICT sector. The main goal of this paper is to shed light on these twin developments. We use newly constructed data on industry-level ICT investments between 1990 and 2003 and estimate production functions for manufacturing industries augmented to include ICT capital. We find a significant elasticity of value-added with respect to ICT capital, which increases considerably with the technological sophistication of the industry. We also find that ICT capital deepening is the most important factor contributing to value added growth in manufacturing during 1995-2000, before the burst of the dot.com bubble. Because most ICT capital is concentrated in high tech industries, growth in manufacturing has been mostly confined to the high-tech sector. Facilitating the adoption of ICT in traditional industries is therefore crucial to achieving economy-wide growth. The Israeli experience described here - although restricted to the manufacturing sector - provides a useful example of the benefits and limitations associated with a growth strategy centred on a local ICT producing sector, however successful it might be.GPT; ICT; productivity growth

The electrification-malaria nexus: the case of rural Uganda

Sub-Saharan countries are facing multiple simultaneous challenges that include the need to both increase access to electricity and combat morbidity and mortality caused by malaria. This study is the first to explore the nexus between electrification and malaria incidence using country-wide representative household-level data. The focus is on rural Uganda. Despite the fact that data used in this analysis come from a multi-topic survey and therefore do not include the ideal indicators for a malaria-related study, we do find evidence that household members having access to electricity are more likely to experience malaria. Our interpretation is that electric light attracts malaria vectors and that lifestyle changes associated with outdoor lighting increase human exposure to the vectors. Our findings suggest that the electrification process in Uganda should be complemented by anti-malaria strategies