TY  - JOUR
AU  - Pakes,Ariel
AU  - Griliches,Zvi
TI  - Patents and R and D at the Firm Level: A First Look
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 561
PY  - 1980
Y2  - October 1980
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0561
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0561.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Ariel Pakes
Department of Economics
Harvard University
Littauer Room 117
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/495-5320
Fax: 617/496-7352
E-Mail: apakes@fas.harvard.edu

Zvi Griliches
E-Mail: N/A user is deceased
M1  - published as Ariel Pakes, Zvi Griliches. "Patents and R&D at the Firm Level: A First Look," in Zvi Griliches, ed., "R & D, Patents, and Productivity" University of Chicago Press (1984)

AB  - This is a first report from a larger study of inventive activity of U.S. firms and some of its consequences. It reports on the relationship between patents applied for and R&D expenditures based on data for 121 large corporations covering the 1968-1975 period. The main conclusion is that there is a statistically significant relationship between a firm's R&D expenditures and the number of patents it applied for and receives. This relationship is very strong in the cross-sectional dimension (squared partial correlations of .8 or higher). It is weaker in the within-firm time-series dimension (partial r[squared]'s of .2 to .3). Attempts to fit an unconstrained distributed lag relationship yields only significant coefficients for the first and last terms in the lag structure, indicating both a quick response of patenting to changes in R&D and a small but persistent effect of past R&D, the truncation of this long lag being reflected in a significant coefficient for R&D lagged five years. In spite of these difficulties, patent counts do measure something systematic and hence are worthy of further study.
ER  -