This paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occurred in the last two decades in the U.S., and reviews the existing analyses by economists that attempt to measure the impacts these changes have had on the processes of technological change. It also reviews the...

This paper presents evidence that firms' patents, profits and market value are systematically related to the"technological position" of firms' research programs. Further, firms are seen to "move" in technology space in response to the pattern of contemporaneous profits at different positions....

This paper uses sales and patent distribution data to establish the market and technological "positions" of firms. A notion of technological proximity of firms is developed in order to quantify potential R&D spillovers. The importance of the position variables and the potential spilover pool in...

The relationship between technological change and environmental policy has received increasing attention from scholars and policy makers alike over the past ten years. This is partly because the environmental impacts of social activity are significantly affected by technological change, and...

Market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies. These combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the...

We develop a methodology for testing Hick's induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests: (i) the...

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low-quality patent applications. The study analyses the effect of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a substantial increase in patenting fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office,...

This research uses Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure and data from the Business Operations Survey to investigate the correlations at the firm level between a) employee characteristics and firm international engagement, and b) firm international engagement and innovation....