基于专利分析的中国农业技术创新能力研究

以中国发明专利数据库为基础,采用文献计量分析的原理和方法,研究了我国农业技术发明专利的产出情况,从量化角度直观地分析了我国农业技术创新能力的现状,得出了我国农业技术创新水平逐年提高,创新主体呈现多元化发展的格局,但同国外企业相比,国内企业的技术创新能力不强,在农业技术创新中的主体地位并没有确立的结论.此研究结果对于我国...     

Popularity of patent commercialization policies: Iran as a case

Commercialization of technologies has attracted increasing attention over the past years due to its role in improving national competitiveness. Iran has not been an exception as the country's policy-makers have been actively engaged in crafting national policies to facilitate and promote commercialization of technologies. The popularity of the existing policies in this field, however, has not been properly researched. Our research, by following a survey study methodology, aims for the first time to address this gap. The study looks at popularity of governmental policies aimed at supporting commercialization of patented technologies in Iran, based on the careful study of 10 cases of successfully commercialized patented technologies in Iran. Our results indicate that the commercialization process of the studied patented technologies was very much affected by some company/technology-specific characteristics. The study shows that the two policy measures with the highest perceived popularity were the financial supports and the services offered by incubation centers. Our results also show that some of the existing supportive policy measures did not serve the intended purposes and some other measures need to be fine-tuned, as far as the studied cases are concerned, such as frequently held invention and innovation exhibitions and the government-supported media coverage.     

Knowledge creation and diffusion of Taiwan's universities: Knowledge trajectory from patent data

The university sector, receiving government funding to perform basic research, is designated to produce and widely disseminate innovative knowledge to industry in many countries, particularly in latecomer countries such as Taiwan. Knowledge flows occurring in university research can be traced with patent data. This exploratory study aims to investigate knowledge creation and diffusion of Taiwan's universities by using university patents as the proxy. The empirical analysis finds a dramatic increase in the number of university patents after 2002. Some implications are derived based on this empirical analysis. Moreover, the cross-national citation behavior of university research would be worthwhile for conceptualizing transnational innovation networks in future studies.     

Effects of external uncertainties and power on opportunism in supply chains: evidence from China

This study examines the determinants of opportunism in supply chain relationships in emerging markets. Drawing on transaction cost theory and resource dependence theory, we propose that external uncertainties (environmental uncertainty and legal unprotectability) influence opportunism through power (coercive and non-coercive). The results, based on 240 companies in China, indicate that environmental uncertainty enhances supplier opportunism directly and indirectly through the buyer’s use of coercive power over the supplier, while legal unprotectability enhances supplier opportunism directly, but reduces it indirectly through the buyer’s use of non-coercive power. While buyer coercive power increases supplier opportunism, buyer non-coercive power decreases it.     

The effect of innovation on productivity: evidence from Turkish manufacturing firms

This paper systematically explores the effects of firms’ innovation activities on their productivity changes for Turkish manufacturing firms, differentiating between different typologies of innovation. We employ endogenous switching methodology, controlling for endogeneity and selection bias issues, as well as analysing counterfactual scenarios. The main finding of the study points to firm heterogeneity in terms of propensity both to innovate and to benefit from innovation activities. Our results indicate that all types of innovation activity have positive effects on the productivity of firms when compared with non-innovating firms. We find robust evidence for the differential impact of innovation on firm productivity across different innovation types. Further, this relationship alters across different phases of the economy with respect to the 2008 financial crisis.     

Exploring the quality of environmental technology in Europe: evidence from patent citations

In this paper we carry out an empirical analysis to address some questions concerning the production and quality of technology in environmental sectors. The methodology involves patents as a measure of the generation of new knowledge, and patent citations as a proxy for the quality of a technological invention. The sample contains more than 12,000 environmental European patents from firms and government institutions from 1998 to 2004. From our econometric analysis, we found that environmental patents applied by individual inventors present on average less quality that those applied by institutional inventors. The size of family patent is relevant to explain forward patent citation. Furthermore, patents coming from abroad (out of Europe), in particular with US and Japan priority, are more cited on average than local patents (with European priority). Lastly, the specialization in environmental fields of a patent plays a negative role in determining the frequency of forward citation.     

Approaching the technological innovation frontier: evidence from Chinese SOEs

This paper studies how large State-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China are approaching the technological innovation frontier and contributes to the literature on technological catching up and leapfrogging by identifying three models or strategies of approaching the innovation frontier. In addition to the well-recognised technology transfer based strategy, pursuing emerging technologies and reinventing mature technology could also be effective, with reinventing mature technology as the most important strategy. The paper also finds that strong internal R&D capability, rather than manufacturing capability as suggested by the extant literature, is the basis of all three models. This also implies that making big organisational transformations such as changing a technology transfer centred R&D function to a proprietary technology development centred R&D function, changing a manufacturing centred culture to an innovation centred culture, and reshaping the innovation network, is an important precondition to approach the innovation frontier.     

The role of utility models in patent filing strategies: evidence from European countries

We examine the role of utility models (UM) in patent filing strategies. With an extensive patent family data from European countries, we explore the structures and characteristics of patent families, which include UMs. A simple typology of patent families with UM members is introduced. We document that the geographical scope of most patent families with UM members is purely national, which is in line with the conventional view that the UM mechanism covers technologically and economically marginal inventions. However, the image of a UM as a signal of a minor invention is an oversimplification. Applicants exhibit a mixture of uses for the UM and there exists a subset of UM filings linked to inventions the inventive step of which meets or exceeds the threshold required for patent protection. Some UMs are members of international patent families, indicating that applicants may have some strategic motives to use UMs in international filing. The findings highlight that both types of IPR documents (UMs and patents) should be taken into account when working with data on patent families, analyzing patent filing strategies, and constructing patent-based indicators such as patenting propensities.     

Educational reforms and internationalization of universities: evidence from major regions of the world

Internationalization of universities has become a worldwide phenomenon as global economic integration continues to make its way forcefully into the higher education. The objective of the study is to develop a model for internationalization of universities with the transformation of some promising macroeconomic variables i.e., educational reforms and economic growth in the seven largest regions of the world [namely, East Asia and Pacific (sample 25 countries); Europe and Central Asia (40 countries); Latin America and Caribbean (27 countries); Middle East and North Africa (17 countries); North America (22 countries); South Asia (7 countries) and Sub-Saharan Africa (21 countries)]. The data has been analyzed by panel fixed effect regression from the period of 1990–2011. In addition to transform inputs into output, the study employed eleven indicators of education and five indicators for growth, where the resulting vector is internationalization. The results show the dynamic linkages between educational indicators and economic factors in the selected regions of the World. In East Asia and Pacific region, tertiary and higher education expenditures per student increase the economic factors. Higher education is a powerful driver of long-term growth in Europe and Central Asia. Governments of the state should have to focus on higher education enrolment, as it does not have any significant contribution to increase GDP; gross capital formation and FDI in Latin America and Caribbean region. Higher education enrolment in MENA region significantly increases growth factors on the cost of increase gross national expenditures. Investment in general education and other generic human capital is of the utmost importance in creating an enabling environment for FDI in North America. It is imperative for South Asia to encourage the skill levels and education opportunities for females, in order to maximize the effects of FDI on the female human capital stock and therefore economic growth. Tertiary school enrolment and tertiary expenditures per student identified the importance of tertiary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The results conclude that educational indicators improve the economic gains, which ultimately reap out the benefit of internationalization.     

Research and innovation in higher education: empirical evidence from research and patenting in Brazil

Scientometrics - The encyclicals, also known as papal letters, are documents that have a profound influence on the Catholic Church and, as a result, on the West. This research seeks to explore the...     

A new measure of innovation: The patent success ratio

Summary Patents have become increasingly important, especially over the past two decades. As patent office procedures have adapted to remain abreast of changing economic and scientific circumstances, it has also become increasingly important to define and analyse innovation more precisely. This paper introduces a simple new measure of innovation, the patent success ratio (PSR), or the ratio of successful patent applications to total patent applications. It has been argued in the extensive literature on innovation and technology policy that patents can serve as an accurate proxy for innovative activity or innovation. This paper suggests that PSR is a more accurate measure of how innovative activity has changed over time. A sensitivity analysis is conducted to assess the usefulness of the new PSR measure of innovation using annual US data for the period 1915-2001.     

The innovation and performance effects of well-designed environmental regulation: evidence from Sweden

This paper provides novel empirical insights into the Porter hypothesis (PH) and its dynamic nature. The PH posits that well-designed environmental regulations induce eco-innovations at polluting firms that improve both their environmental and business performance via ‘innovation offsets.’ We conduct an econometric test of this proposition, using Swedish pulp and paper plants as empirical application. Swedish environmental regulation of polluting industries provides an interesting case because it has been praised, due to containing elements of ‘well-designed’ regulations, for being conducive to accomplishing the ‘win-win’ situation of mutual environmental and economic benefits. The empirical results indicate that flexible and dynamic command-and-control regulation and economic incentive instruments have induced innovation offsets through improved energy efficiency. Our study bears important implications: empirical tests of the PH that do not account for its dynamic nature, and that do not measure ‘well-designed’ regulations, might provide misleading conclusions as to its validity.     

Transaction-level determinants of transfer-pricing policy: evidence from the high-technology sector

This paper uses transaction cost economics (TCE) as the basisfor an empirical study of transfer pricing—pricing ofintra-firm transactions—in a multi-divisional firm. Thestudy finds the evidence to support predictions that transaction-specificinvestment and quality requirements increase the likelihoodthat headquarters will centrally administer the pricing of transactionsbetween divisions. This article concludes that, just as transaction-costeconomizing plays a role in organizing transactions betweenfirms, it also affects organization of exchange within firms.     

The choice of examiner patent citations for refusals: evidence from the trilateral offices

Utilizing a novel methodology based on international family-to-family patent citation data, this paper directly compares X/Y patent citations (i.e., those cited as grounds for rejections, equivalent to “blocking patents” in the US) between major patent offices. Remarkable discrepancies between the offices were revealed, despite the common patentability criteria of novelty and inventive step to generate citations. This paper then introduces a simple cosine similarity measurement between a family of X/Y patent citations and all citations added globally to the same original application. How the discrepancies of X/Y patent citations at the European Patent Office (EPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) relate to the characteristics of applications and longitudinal aspects of office actions were also examined. X/Y patent citations from both the EPO and USPTO commonly show that the range of patent application classes is positively correlated with divergent reasons for refusal, suggesting that costly examinations lead to diversified X/Y patent citations. One novel methodological feature of this paper is that examiner citations across jurisdictions are comparable if we employ family-to-family citations and common criteria for the X/Y citation category. Furthermore, unlike the normal citation-generating process where a citing document adds citations to prior art only once, this paper represents the first attempt to analyze a citation network with multiple citing opportunities from separate parties. We find that the variance of citation linkages has a negative relationship with the ease in which different citers evaluate prior art in the same way, thereby providing a new perspective on the notion of breadth in citation impact.     

The idiosyncrasy and dynamism of technological innovation across industries: patent citation analysis

In general, the structural and behavioral patterns of technological innovation are idiosyncratic across industrial sectors and dynamic over time. Yet, despite voluminous amounts of previous research, patterns of innovation are hard to standardize or theorize. The objectives of this article are two-fold. One is to investigate distinctive and changing patterns of technological innovation across industries and observe dynamic trends over time. The other is to identify patterns of relationships among industries and examine the roles of respective industries. To this end, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) patent database was used and patent citation analysis applied. The idiosyncratic differences among industrial sectors are highlighted, especially between conventional manufacturing sectors and science-based sectors. We also found changing trends in technological knowledge flows across industries.     

Power-law distributions of corporate innovative output: evidence from U.S. patent data

Scientometrics - This study aims to examine the existence and the characteristics of power laws in the distribution of corporate innovative output. Using a dataset containing information on...     

The effects of technological innovation on sustainable development and environmental degradation: Evidence from China

Despite the rapid progress of the global economy and technology's key role, severe environmental and ecological challenges must be given proper attention to advance sustainable development. This paper uses the autoregressive distributed lag method on 40 years of data to investigate the impact of technological innovation on China's sustainable development and determine the channels through which technological innovation contributes to sustainable development. Our empirical results demonstrate that technological innovation is an important driver in promoting sustainable development, revealing that innovation adds to economic growth without harmful effects on the environment. The results also indicate that financial development significantly adds to China's sustainable development through carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions reduction, and economic growth further triggers the sustainability process by reducing CO₂ emissions. The findings of this paper enhance existing theories and contribute to the progress of sustainable development in China, the novel results outlining industry development drivers could potentially be used for developing global innovation policies integration.