Mining innovation and economic cycles: how commodity prices affect mining related patenting?

Giulia Valacchi (), Julio Raffo (), Alica Daly () and David Humphreys ()
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Giulia Valacchi: World Intellectual Property Organization
Julio Raffo: World Intellectual Property Organization
Alica Daly: World Intellectual Property Organization
David Humphreys: Dundee University

Mineral Economics, 2023, vol. 36, issue 3, No 6, 437-461

Abstract: Abstract This paper analyses the evolution of innovation in the mining sector and how this innovation responds to the economic environment, in particular to changes in commodity prices. For this purpose, we combine commodity price data with innovation data as proxied by patent filings extracted from a novel unit record database containing comprehensive patent and firm-level data for the mining sector from 1970 to 2015. We include patents registered both by mining companies and mining equipment, technology, and service (METS) firms. With a multi-country panel analysis, we find that innovation in the mining sector is cyclical. Innovation increases in periods of high commodity prices while decreasing during commodity price recessions. Our results suggest that innovation increases mostly with long price cycle variations, while mostly unaffected by medium and short cycles. METS-related innovation seem the driving force of this mechanism. In contrast, countries specializing in mining industries are found to be slower in reacting to price changes.

Keywords: Mining; Innovation; Price cycles; Supercycles; Commodity prices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E32 L16 L72 L78 O31 Q02 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1007/s13563-022-00359-7

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