This survey reviews the growing use of patent data in economic analysis. After describing some of the main characteristics of patents and patent data, it focuses on the use of patents as an indicator of technological change. Cross-sectional and time-series studies of the relationship of patents...

This paper summarizes a number of studies which use patent data to examine different aspects of technological change. It describes our firm level data set construction effort; reports on the relationship between RLD expenditures and the level of patenting; analyzes the relationship between...

Explores how patents statistics can be utilized to examine innovation patterns and technological change within firms, industries, and regions, and discusses the challenges in their interpretation. Patent documents contain a wide array of information including the name and address of the...