Mapping Technological Trajectories: Evidence from Two Centuries of Patent Data

Antonin Bergeaud, Ruveyda Gozen and John Michael van Reenen
Additional contact information
Antonin Bergeaud: HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales
Ruveyda Gozen: LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science
John Michael van Reenen: LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: We introduce a methodology to measure cross-country trends in innovation capability - "technological trajectories" and implement this on a new rich dataset covering patents between 1836 and 2016 across multiple countries. Intuitively, trajectories are revealed by a country's sustained increases in patenting across multiple patent offices. We first describe the data patterns, showing the relative decline of the UK, and the rise first of the US and Germany, and then later of Japan and China. We then econometrically estimate trajectories on (i) the post-1902 period for France, Germany, Japan, the UK and US, and (ii) the post-1960 period for a wider sample of 40 countries. Our trajectories are strongly positively correlated with Total Factor Productivity growth, and also (but less strongly) associated with the growth of labour productivity and capital intensity. We show that future trajectories are predicted by a country's initial levels of R&D, education and defence spending, classic drivers of innovation in modern growth theory. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Date: 2026-02-03
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:hal:wpaper:hal-05730043

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.6167252

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().