Shedding Light on Inventors' Returns to Patents

Domenico Depalo and Sabrina Di Addario

Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley

Abstract: We estimate individual returns to patents using a unique longitudinal administrative dataset on patents and earnings, following individuals and rms for 20 years (1987-2006). We nd that inventors' wages steadily increase before patent applications are submitted to the EPO, peak in the year preceding their ling, and then decrease again. We take the fact that earnings peak at t-1 instead of at t as a bureaucratic delay between the time the invention really takes place and the time when the rm submits the application. We also nd that the applications that will eventually lead to a granted patent receive a greater wage increase than those who will not. Finally, we use an event study framework to distinguish among inventor-types, and we nd that the \star-inventors" (the employees submitting at least three times in their life) receive a lasting wage premium, while the employees with one or two submissions stop receiving the premium after the application date.

Keywords: Social and Behavioral Sciences; patents; wages; incentives; inventors; perfomances pay; return (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-08-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ino, nep-ipr and nep-pr~
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/6pd795kq.pdf;origin=repeccitec (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Shedding Light on Inventors' Returns to Patents
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:cdl:indrel:qt6pd795kq

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series from Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Lisa Schiff ().