Drawing upon 106,181 patent applications by the world’s largest defense firms and 241,571 patent citations (2002-2011), this paper has two main objectives. The first is to explore the factors affecting the production of mixed patents (those with potential dual applications in both military and...

This paper examines the generation of technological knowledge by leading companies in the defence industry. In particular, we test whether the characteristics of large defence companies are related to both the production of different types of patents (civilian, military and mixed), and the...

Technological diversity, or the breadth of technological knowledge embedded in patented inventions, refers to the range of different technological or economic fields covered by a patent. This paper explores the role of diversification scope in encouraging the production of new patents in...

Public research institutions have a key role in a knowledge-based society as they lead scientific research, and generate patentable technology directly applicable to industrial productive processes. In this paper, we address the latter role. Several well-known papers have dealt with the...

This paper explores three novel research questions. First, is an increase in the number of countries involved in ownership of a co-patent an effective way to enhance patent quality? Second, if the objective is to raise patent quality, which are the right countries to collaborate with? And third,...

The aim of this work is to identify convergence clubs in 17 Latin American countries in terms of GDP per capita during the period 1990-2014. To do this we apply the methodology developed by Phillips-Sul in order to identify the different convergence clubs on the path of growth in the Latin...

The goal of this paper is to analyse the innovation activity convergence process across European regions from 2002 to 2012. A novel methodology that allows either detection of overall convergence or endogenous identification of groups of regions was applied. The results support the club...

This paper examines the patterns of convergence in international scientific collaboration across a set of developed and developing countries from 1997 through 2012. The empirical analysis was carried out in a novel way applying the methodology developed by Phillips and Sul (2007, 2009) to...

Countries’ scientifc systems are a key element of the knowledge economy. This paper explores the convergence pattern of the scientifc systems of a wide range of countries around the world during the period 2003–2016. Drawing on data on national scientifc production from a sample of 121...