National Technological Specialization and Sectoral Growth Rates in Patenting

Abstract

The previous two Chapters have mapped the different countries’ sectoral strengths and weaknesses in technological activity by using patent data as an indicator. We have already stressed that the quality of individual patents is highly skewed, and that while some have a dramatic economic impact, many patents never become actual innovations. In the previous Chapter we also considered an indicator of their impact, i.e. patent citations, and significant cross-country differences were shown to exist in the average impact of patented inventions at the aggregate level. At the sectoral level, however, a strong positive correlation emerged between the specialization profiles measured on the number of patents and of the citations received.