On the urban bias of patents and the scaling of innovation
Taalbi, Josef LU and Martynovich, Mikhail LU
(2024)
In Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography
- Abstract
- While recent studies have heralded large cities as “innovation machines”, the majority of regional studies of innovation are based on patent indicators. In this paper, we compare regional patent and innovation counts in Sweden (1970-2014) and document the presence of a sizeable urban bias in patent indicators, which is primarily explained by higher patent filing propensity in urban areas. We also show that using administrative spatial units which do not account for spatial organization of economic activity tends to exacerbate this bias. This poses a problem for academic studies that wish to understand regional innovation, or policy reports benchmarking regional performance.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/72fcc378-abc6-4bb9-98cd-f7ad369f8342
- author
- Taalbi, Josef
LU
and Martynovich, Mikhail
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2024
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography
- issue
- 2024:22
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 72fcc378-abc6-4bb9-98cd-f7ad369f8342
- alternative location
- http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg2422.pdf
- date added to LUP
- 2024-07-31 16:44:12
- date last changed
- 2024-08-07 02:47:56
@misc{72fcc378-abc6-4bb9-98cd-f7ad369f8342,
abstract = {{While recent studies have heralded large cities as “innovation machines”, the majority of regional studies of innovation are based on patent indicators. In this paper, we compare regional patent and innovation counts in Sweden (1970-2014) and document the presence of a sizeable urban bias in patent indicators, which is primarily explained by higher patent filing propensity in urban areas. We also show that using administrative spatial units which do not account for spatial organization of economic activity tends to exacerbate this bias. This poses a problem for academic studies that wish to understand regional innovation, or policy reports benchmarking regional performance.}},
author = {{Taalbi, Josef and Martynovich, Mikhail}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Preprint}},
number = {{2024:22}},
series = {{Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography}},
title = {{On the urban bias of patents and the scaling of innovation}},
url = {{http://econ.geo.uu.nl/peeg/peeg2422.pdf}},
year = {{2024}},
}