Innovation in the Mining Sector and Cycles in Commodity Prices

Giulia Valacchi, Julio Raffo, Alica Daly and David Humphreys

No 55, WIPO Economic Research Working Papers from World Intellectual Property Organization - Economics and Statistics Division

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: 2019-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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