Measuring the characteristics and employment dynamics of U.S. inventors

Ufuk Akcigit () and Nathan Goldschlag
Additional contact information
Ufuk Akcigit: University of Chicago, NBER, CEPR
Nathan Goldschlag: U.S. Census Bureau

Journal of Economic Growth, 2025, vol. 30, issue 2, No 1, 237-269

Abstract: Abstract Innovation is a key driver of long-run economic growth. Studying innovation requires a clear view of the characteristics and behavior of the individuals who create new ideas. A general lack of rich, large-scale data has constrained such analyses. We address this by introducing a new dataset linking patent inventors to survey, census, and administrative microdata at the U.S. Census Bureau. We use this data to provide a first look at the demographic characteristics, employer characteristics, earnings, and employment dynamics of inventors. These linkages, which will be available to researchers with approved access, dramatically increase the scope of what can be learned about inventors and innovative activity.

Keywords: Inventors; Innovation; R&D; Firms; Dynamism; Reallocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O3 O4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10887-025-09251-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jecgro:v:30:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1007_s10887-025-09251-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... th/journal/10887/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10887-025-09251-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Growth is currently edited by Oded Galor

More articles in Journal of Economic Growth from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().