Abstract

The analysis of patent and citation data has become a popular source of evidence on localized knowledge spillovers and innovation. Nevertheless, an aspect has been overlooked: the patent distribution across inventors is extremely skewed, as many inventors register one or a few patents, while a small number of inventors register many patents. To our knowledge, the previous empirical literature has not discussed the different kinds of local innovation from which patents may originate. A first contribution of this paper is therefore to document the issue. A second contribution is to investigate whether patents originating from different scales of innovation are located in different cities. A third contribution - which constitutes the main scope of the paper - is to test whether the concentration of the activity of star inventors is beneficial to the local productivity of other kinds of innovation - namely the ones led by more occasional, and less prolific, inventors.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.