Ideas production and international knowledge spillovers: digging deeper into emerging countries


Book Description

Research and development (R&D) activities of emerging countries (EMEs) have increased considerably in recent years. How important are knowledge transfers from developed countries and other emerging countries? This wide-ranging but rigorous macro-level study of 31 EMEs provides some much-needed evidence.




Diaspora Networks, Knowledge Flows and Brain Drain


Book Description

The paper summarizes key findings from the literature on how distance, relationships and ethnic ties influence knowledge flows, and describes a model that relates emigration and the diaspora to knowledge flows. It recaps a key study that reports evidence of a link from the diaspora and knowledge flows to home country manufacturing productivity. The study summarizes the ways in which intellectual property (IP) protection may influence knowledge flow patterns through incentives (market for ideas) and disincentives (anticommons). Finally, it speculates on how diaspora knowledge flows and IP may alleviate developing country low-productivity equilibria (“poverty traps”) caused by an underinvestment in specialized human capital.




Measuring the income to intangibles in goods production: a global value chain approach


Book Description

Today’s production processes are fragmented across countries and industries. Intangibles play an important role, but their measurement is elusive. This paper proposes a new empirical framework to measure factor incomes in production that spans industries and countries.




Measuring the International Mobility of Inventors: A New Database


Book Description

This paper has two objectives. First, it describes a new database mapping migratory patterns of inventors, extracted from information included in patent applications filed under the Patent Cooperation Treaty. It explains in detail the information contained in the database and discusses the usefulness and reliability of the underlying data. Second, the paper provides a descriptive overview of inventor migration patterns, based on the information contained in the newly constructed database.




Identifying and ranking the world's largest clusters of inventive activity


Book Description

This paper presents an empirical approach to identifying and ranking the world’s largest clusters of inventive activity on the basis of patent filings. Patent data offer rich information on the locality of innovative activity. Many researchers have already made use of these data to study individual clusters or selected clusters within a particular region. Our approach goes beyond existing work by identifying and ranking innovation clusters on an internationally comparable basis.




What Makes Companies Pursue an Open Science Strategy?


Book Description

This paper explores the motivations of firms that disclose research outcomes in a scientific format. Besides considering an internal firm dimension, the authors focus particularly on knowledge sourcing from academic institutions and the appropriability regime using a cost-benefit framework. The analysis provides evidence that the access to important scientific knowledge imposes the adoption of academic disclosure principles, whereas the mere existence of collaborative links with academic institutions is not a strong predictor. Furthermore, the results suggest that overall industry conditions are influential in shaping the cost-benefit rationale of firms with respect to scientific disclosure.




Global Economic Prospects, June 2021


Book Description

The world economy is experiencing a very strong but uneven recovery, with many emerging market and developing economies facing obstacles to vaccination. The global outlook remains uncertain, with major risks around the path of the pandemic and the possibility of financial stress amid large debt loads. Policy makers face a difficult balancing act as they seek to nurture the recovery while safeguarding price stability and fiscal sustainability. A comprehensive set of policies will be required to promote a strong recovery that mitigates inequality and enhances environmental sustainability, ultimately putting economies on a path of green, resilient, and inclusive development. Prominent among the necessary policies are efforts to lower trade costs so that trade can once again become a robust engine of growth. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Economic Prospects. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). Each edition includes analytical pieces on topical policy challenges faced by these economies.




Exploring the Worldwide Patent Surge


Book Description

This paper provides an analysis of global patenting trends using the most comprehensive data currently available. Among other things, it finds that subsequent patent filings – additional filings of the same invention, mostly in additional countries – contributed considerably to the growth in filings worldwide, pointing to globalization as one important driver of filing growth. However, no single factor can fully explain the marked increase in the use of the patent system.




Getting Patents and Economic Data to Speak to Each Other: An “Algorithmic Links with Probabilities” Approach for Joint Analyses of Patenting and Economic Activity


Book Description

In this paper, the authors describe and explore a new algorithmic approach to constructing concordances between the International Patent Classification (IPC) system and industry classification systems that organize economic data. This ‘Algorithmic Links with Probabilities’ (ALP) approach incorporates text analysis software and keyword extraction programs and applies them to a comprehensive patent dataset. The authors conclude with a discussion on some of the possible applications of the concordance and provide a sample analysis that uses their preferred ALP concordance to analyze international patent flows based on trade patterns.




Economic growth and breakthrough innovations: A case study of nanotechnology


Book Description

This paper examines the role of intellectual property and other innovation incentives in the development of one field of breakthrough innovation: nanotechnology. Because nanotechnology is an enabling technology across a wide range of fields, the nanotechnology innovation ecosystem appears to be a microcosm of the global innovation ecosystem. Part I describes the nature of nanotechnology and its economic contribution, Part II explores the nanotechnology innovation ecosystem, and Part III focuses on the role of IP systems in the development of nanotechnology.