Measuring Technological Innovation Over the Long Run
Overview
Paper Summary
This paper introduces a new text-based measure of patent significance that predicts future citations and correlates with market value. Using this measure, the authors identify three major technological waves over two centuries and show that these waves are strong predictors of aggregate and sectoral productivity.
Explain Like I'm Five
Scientists found a way to tell how important old inventions were by looking at their papers. They saw that big new ideas came in waves, like bursts of creativity, which helped us make more and better things over time.
Possible Conflicts of Interest
At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research.
Identified Limitations
Rating Explanation
This paper presents a novel approach to measuring technological innovation using textual analysis of patents, which offers advantages over traditional citation-based measures, particularly for analyzing long-run trends. The methodology is well-validated and the findings regarding technological waves and their link to productivity are significant. However, there are some limitations regarding the potential disconnect between the textual measure and true economic value, and data constraints affect the scope of some analyses.
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