Transcript Productivity of Research Scientists Jinyoung Kim, Sangjoon John Lee, Gerald Marschke Thoughts from Alex Bryson Policy Studies Institute SEWP Research Conference, NBER 19TH-20TH October 2005

Productivity of Research Scientists
Jinyoung Kim, Sangjoon John Lee,
Gerald Marschke
Thoughts from
Alex Bryson
Policy Studies Institute
SEWP Research Conference, NBER
19TH-20TH October 2005
Patents as Productivity
• ‘To patent or not to patent’
– Not all innovations are patented
• Depends on rents to be earned (James Bessen)
• All patents are not the same
– Weighting by ‘value’
– ‘typically assigned’
• WHOSE patent? If worker’s then raises market value. If firm’s
raises their market value. Important to use ‘assignee type’ and
explain institutional context
• % of ‘semi-conductor’ and ‘pharmaceutical’
inventors patenting outside of these two industries
Patent-Inventor Ratio by ForeignExperience
• Gives 2 reasons on page 19:
– Causal impact of foreign experience
– Migration of more productive inventors to the US
• 3rd possibility
– Foreign experience proxies some other productivity enhancing factor,
eg. Age which is associated with accumulated human capital
– Test in multivariate framework
• Increase in relative productivity of current US residents with
foreign experience since 1993 coincides with decline in their
relative numbers
– Suggests possible selection effect
• Expected to see Figure V-1 for the two industries that are
central to the rest of the paper
Determinants of citation to foreignassigned patents
• Clear effect of inventor foreign experience (‘knowledge
spillover’)
• Split this dummy by whether current foreign resident or exforeign resident
– Direct test of whether increase in use of foreign resident inventors is
having positive spillovers for firms
• If extended analysis by pooling years interact these two
dummies with time to see if these returns have risen
– Might explain why we see increase in foreign resident inventors
• Some puzzling results that need further investigation
– Difference in firm age effects across 2 sectors
Data issues
• Meticulous data construction – exemplary
• Addresses and animal rights
• Degree/higher degree rates seem low
– How complete are the 1k universities
– Foreign qualifications beyond US/Europe
• Multiple patent assignments each year
– Whose employee?
• Industry dynamics
– Semicon firms smaller throughout but increase in N employees per
firm whereas fall in N employees per firm in phara
– Increase in sales and R&D in both industries but faster in
semiconductors
– Implications if any?
• Four pharmaceutical firms missing from Table II_6a
Implications of Compact as Firm Universe
• Don’t know % all patents covered
– >=$5m assets, 500+ shareholders
– SIC only in Compact data?
– Lots of innovation below this
• Some firms with very low N employees (Table II-6)
– How so? Subsidiaries of larger firms?
• Fall in % of firms reporting employment in both sectors
over time (Table II-1). Not true of sales/r&d.
– Why?
– Any bias introduced?
Why Do Foreign Inventors Remain Home-based?
• No need to move
– Telecom improvements (authors suggest)
• Implies codification of ‘tacit’ knowledge
– Cheap flights
• Demand outstripping supply
– May explain why trends so pronounced in industries identified.
• Could do more to elaborate on market context
– Laboratories abroad (authors suggest)
• But why? Labour cost reduction? Tax breaks/burdens
• Changes in nature of collaboration
– N inventors per patent
– Increased specialisation in contribution of inventors
– Increased ability to codify