From a survey of the inventors of 9,017 European patents, this paper provides new information about the characteristics of European inventors, the sources of their knowledge, the importance of formal and informal collaborations, the motivations to invent, and the actual use and economic value of...

This paper studies the determinants of the quantity and quality of inventors' patents. It uses a sample of 793 inventors drawn from the PatVal-EU dataset and the information on EPO patents that they contributed to inventing during the period 1988-1998. It explores three aspects of the inventors'...

This paper estimates the determinants of labour productivity in European NUTS regions during 1989-1996. Unlike previous studies, which have focussed either on local technological capabilities or on agglomeration economies, we compare three potential explanations of regional advantages:...