The aim is to contribute to our understanding of the role of patent thickets as a barrier to entry into new technologies for UK enterprises, in particular small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).The report consists of several parts:A review of the literature on patent thickets, including the...

I survey some recent research on the role of patents in encouraging innovation and growth in developing economies, beginning with a brief history of international patent systems and facts about the current use of patents around the world. I discuss research on the implications of patents for...

This paper investigates the dynamics of firm growth in the U. S.manufacturing sector in the recent past. I use panel data on thepublicly traded firms in the U. S. manufacturing sector: from auniverse of approximately 1800 firms in 1976, I am able to follow mostof them for at least three years,...

This paper investigates the relationship between earnings, schooling, and ability for young men and women who entered the labor force during the late 60s and 70s. The emphasis is on controlling for both observed and unobserved family characteristics, extending a framework developed earlier by...

Several studies based on US and UK data have used market value as an indicator of the firm''s expected R&D performance. However, there exist no investigations for the continental countries in the European Union, partly because the analysis is complicated by data availability problems. In this...

We use a large dataset of approximately 1500 physicists employed by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France to investigate the role of cumulative advantage in their publication career. Measuring output by time series of the number of publications and the number of...

We analyze how expropriation risk reduces incentives for innovation and reallocates resources from the innovative sector, building on Romer's(1990) model. Our framework predicts the R&D expenditure, the share of human capital in R&D, the number of patents, technical progress, and economic growth...

We report the results of the first comparative study of the determinants and effects of patent oppositions in Europe and of re-examinations on corresponding patents issued in the United States. The analysis is based on a dataset consisting of matched EPO and US patents. Our analysis focuses on...