Adam Jaffe

Motu Economic and Public Policy Research

The phenomenon of “spillovers” of R&D means that small countries can benefit from the research and innovation investment of larger countries, but also need a strategy for capturing locally the benefits of local research and innovation investments. The Science of Science Policy provides models, measurement tools and insights to inform this process.

This paper surveys the existing literature on diffusion of environmentally beneficial technology. Overall, it confirms many of the lessons of the larger literature on technology diffusion: diffusion often appears slow when viewed from the outside; the flow of information is an important factor in the diffusion process; networks and organisations ca...

Economic theory predicts that policies that discourage the consumption of a particular good will induce innovation in a socially desirable substitute. However, the literature on technology trajectories emphasizes the possibility of innovation waves associated with the identification of new dominant designs. We incorporate both of these possibilitie...

There is a strong foundation in theoretical and empirical research in economics for the proposition that efficient climate policy must include both carbon-price policy and technology policy. Even the most modest projections of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reductions needed to moderate climate change imply very large reductions in the carbon-intensity of th...

Intellectual property is a vital part of the global economy, accounting for about half of the GDP in countries like the United States. Innovation, competition, economic growth and jobs can all be helped or hurt by different approaches to this key asset class, where seemingly slight changes in the rules of the game can have remarkable impact. This b...

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Neoclassical economic theory predicts that policies that discourage the consumption of a particular good will induce innovation in a socially desirable substitute. Evolutionary theory emphasizes the possibility of innovation waves associated with the identification of new dominant designs. We incorporate both of these possibilities in a model of th...

Previous studies have questioned the external validity of randomized controlled trial results of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) because of potential selection bias toward healthier patients. We sought to evaluate differences in clinical characteristics and management of patients admitted with non-ST-elevation ACS according to participation in clinic...

The development and commercialization of new technologies— technological innovation—creates broad social benefits. Over time, it allows us collectively to live longer, healthier lives, to increase our incomes, and to consume a broader array of goods and services. Innovation enables us to live differently from our grandparents. Thus, it is in our co...

Within the field of environmental economics, the role of technological change has received much attention. The long-term nature of many environmental problems, such as climate change, makes understanding the evolution of technology an important part of projecting future impacts. Moreover, in many cases environmental problems cannot be addressed, or...

The Europe and Central Asia (ECA) Knowledge Economy Study aims to offer ECA policy makers options to increase and maintain productivity and growth by creating an environment conducive to the application of knowledge in the economy via innovation and learning. The tradition of excellence in learning and basic research in several ECA countries provid...

Developing the “Science of Science Policy” will require data collection and analysis related to the processes of innovation and technological change, and the effects of government policy on those processes. There has been much work on these topics in the last three decades, but there remain difficult problems of finding proxies for subtle concepts,...

The ability to estimate the likely effects of potential climate change policies on energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions requires an improved understanding of the relationship between different policy alternatives and energy-saving and GHG-reducing changes in technology. A particularly important and understudied aspect of this set of issues...

We explore the role of interfirm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. We argue that knowledge flows between alliance partners will be greater than flows between pairs of nonallied firms, and less than flows between units within single firms. Using patent citations as a proxy for knowledge flows, we find results that are con...

Australian and New Zealand environmental economists have played a significant role in the development of concepts and their application across three fields within their subdiscipline: non-market valuation, institutional economics and bioeconomic modelling. These contributions have been spurred on by debates within and outside the discipline. Much o...

We explore the usefulness of patent citations as a measure of the "importance" of a firm's patents, as indicated by the stock market valuation of the firm's intangible stock of knowledge. Using patents and citations for 1963--1995, we estimate Tobin's q equations on the ratios of R&D to assets stocks, patents to R&D, and citations to patents. We fi...

Market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies. These combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial tec...

This work discusses the problems with the current patent system in the US. While the US patent policy makes it easier to obtain patents, to enforce patents against others, and to extract large financial awards from such enforcement, it has become harder for those accused of infringing patents to challenge the patents' validity. To address the probl...

1. Overview 2. The Process of Technological Change 3. Understanding the Energy Efficiency Gap 4. Market Failures 5. Non-Market-Failure Explanations of the Energy Efficiency Gap 6. Discounting and Implicit Discount Rates 7. Summary Glossary externality An economically significant effect of an activ-ity, the consequences of which are borne (at least...

The explosion in the patenting rate in the U.S. during the last half of the 1990s is often attributed partly to an apparent decline in examination standards. We estimate a simultaneous equation model accounting for the fact that a decline in examination standards would itself induce an increase in dubious applications. We have a multi-dimensional p...

We analyze the implications of the interaction of market failures associated with pollution and the environment, with market failures associated with the development and diffusion of new technology. These combined market failures imply a strong prima facie case for public policy intervention to foster environmentally beneficial technology. Both the...

Environmental policy discussions increasingly focus on issues related to technological change. This is partly because the environmental consequences of social activity are frequently affected by the rate and direction of technological change, and partly because environmental policy interventions can themselves create constraints and incentives that...

Environmental policy discussions increasingly focus on issues related to technological change. This is partly because the environmental consequences of social activity are frequently affected by the rate and direction of technological change, and partly because environmental policy interventions can themselves create constraints and incentives that...

This paper addresses three questions: (i) Are multinational firms (MNCs) really better than markets at transferring knowledge across borders? (ii) How actively do MNCs exchange knowledge with their host countries? (iii) Do they contribute as much to local knowledge as they learn from their host countries? To answer these questions, I analyze data o...

This paper examines patterns of knowledge diffusion from the U.S. and Japan to Korea and Taiwan using patent citations as an indicator of knowledge flow. We estimate a knowledge diffusion model using a data set of all patents granted in the U.S. to inventors residing in these four countries. Explicitly modeling the roles of technology proximity and...

Introduction There is currently much interest in the potential for public policies to reduce energy consumption because of concerns about global climate change linked with the combustion of fossil fuels. Basic economic theory suggests that if the price of energy relative to other goods rises, the energy intensity of the economy will fall as a resul...

The relationship between technological change and environmental policy has received increasing attention from scholars and policy makers alike over the past ten years. This is partly because the environmental impacts of social activity are significantly affected by technological change, and partly because environmental policy interventions themselv...

The relationship between technological changeand environmental policy has receivedincreasing attention from scholars and policymakers alike over the past ten years. This ispartly because the environmental impacts ofsocial activity are significantly affected bytechnological change, and partly becauseenvironmental policy interventions themselvescreat...

There is wide agreement that the high social rate of return to research and innovation justifies government support for research. There is, however, only limited evidence on the effectiveness of different public research programmes. Reliable measurement of programme effectiveness is hampered by the 'selectivity' problem (public funding goes to prop...

Innovation and technological change, long recognized as the main drivers of long-term economic growth, are elusive notions that are difficult to conceptualize and even harder to measure in a consistent, systematic way. This book demonstrates the usefulness of patents and citations data as a window on the process of technological change and as a pow...

Abstract—This paper explores the recent explosion in university patenting as a source of insight into the changing,relationship between,the university and the private sector. Before the mid-1980s, university patents were more highly cited, and were cited by more diverse patents, than a random sample of all patents. More,recently several significant...

This paper describes the database on U.S. patents that we have developed over the past decade, with the goal of making it widely accessible for research. We present main trends in U. S. patenting over the last 30 years, including a variety of original measures constructed with citation data, such as backward and forward citation lags, indices of 'o...

As patent data become more available in machine-readable form, an increasing number of researchers have begun to use measures based on patents and their citations as indicators of technological output and information flow. This paper explores the economic meaning of these citation-based patent measures using the financial market valuation of the fi...

We develop a methodology for testing Hick's induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests: (i) the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy p...

When innovations are heterogeneous, it may be advantageous to provide a variety of patents. By trading off patent breadth for length, it is possible that fees are not needed in the optimal policy. We present two examples. The first is a quality-ladder model, in which innovations benefit society directly as well as through their use as building bloc...

Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips stock price has been predicted using the difference between core and headline CPI in the United States. Linear trends in the CPI difference allow accurate prediction of the prices at a five to ten-year horizon.

Environmental policy discussions increasingly focus on issues related to technological change. This is partly because the environmental consequences of social activity are frequently affected by the rate and direction of technological change, and partly because environmental policy interventions can themselves create constraints and incentives that...

A survey of recent patentees was conducted to elicit their perceptions regarding the importance of their inventions, the extent of their communication with other inventors, and the relationship of both importance and communication to observed patent citations. A cohort of 1993 patentees were asked specifically about 2 patents that they had cited, a...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

Enhanced energy efficiency occupies a central role in evaluating the efficacy and cost of climate change policies. Ultimately, total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are the product of population, economic activity per capita, energy use per unit of economic activity, and the carbon intensity of energy used. Although greenhouse gas emissions can be l...

This paper surveys the major changes in patent policy and practice that have occured in the last two decades in the U.S., and reviews the existing analyses by the economists that attempt to measure the impacts these changes have had on the processes of technological change. It also reviews the broader theoretical and empirical literature that bears...

We develop a methodology for testing Hicks's induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests that (i) the rate of overall innovation was independent of ene...

This paper analyses the propensity to withdraw European patent applications within a regional sample of Italian applicants. The procedure for obtaining a granted patent from the EPO is composed of a series of sequential and selective steps imposing additional costs to the applicants. Accordingly, we argue that early withdrawals - i.e. those occurri...

Government policies like the Advanced Technology Program (“ATP”) are intended, at least in part, to remedy the “market failure” inherent in the fact that a significant portion of the social benefits of new knowledge and technology are not captured by a firm that invests in R&D. ATP’s project selection, and its evaluation of the impact of its progra...

We develop a methodology for testing Hick’s induced innovation hypothesis by estimating a product-characteristics model of energy-using consumer durables, augmenting the hypothesis to allow for the influence of government regulations. For the products we explored, the evidence suggests: (i) the rate of overall innovation was independent of energy p...

This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Japan. We find (1) patents assigned to the same firm are more likely to cite each other, and come sooner than other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approximately 100 times as likely to cite each other as...

This paper explores the recent explosion in university patenting as a source of insight into the changing relationship between the university and the private sector. Before the mid-1980s, university patents were more highly cited, and were cited by more diverse patents, than a random sample of all patents. More recently several significant shifts i...

Federal lab commercialization is explored (1) by analyzing U.S. government patents and (2) in a qualitative analysis of one NASA lab's patents. Tests apply to three distinct sets of patents, l963-94: NASA, all other U.S. government, and a random sample of all U.S. inventors' patents. The federal patenting rate plummeted in the 1970s. Consistent wit...

This paper explores the patterns of citations among patents taken out by inventors in the U.S., the U.K., France, Germany and Japan. We find that, (1) Patets assigned to the same firm are more likely to cit each other, and come sooner that other citations; (2) patents in the same patent class are approximately 100 times as likely to cite each other...

Modern economies are characterized by a significant division of labor in the production of scientific and technical advance. In broad generalization, universities, other non-profit institutes and government laboratories pursue fundamental scientific and engineering research with little expectation of immediate commercial result. In contrast, privat...

In a 1991 essay in Scientific American, Michael Porter suggested that environmental regulation may have a positive effect on the performance of domestic firms relative to their foreign competitors by stimulating domestic innovation. We examine the stylized facts regarding environmental expenditures and innovation in a panel of manufacturing industr...

This paper is an attempt to quantify key aspects of innovations, 'basicness' and appropriability, and explore the linkages between them. We rely on detailed patent data. particularly on patent citations, thus awarding the proposed measures a very wide coverage. Relying on the prior that universities perform more basic research than corporations, we...

The extent to which new technological knowledge flows across institutional and national boundaries is a question of great importance for public policy and the modeling of economic growth. In this paper we develop a model of the process generating subsequent citations to patents as a lens for viewing knowledge diffusion. We find that the probability...

The possibility of non-market-clearing situations in power systems implies that there is a positive social externality associated with construction of capacity or reduction in peak load. In deciding whether and how to internalize this externality, the policy debate should focus on determining the optimal level of reliability and the best way to ach...

We find that the effects of parent firm R&D on plant-level productivity are diminished by both the geographic and technological distance between the research lab and the plants; that productivity appears to depend on R&D per plant rather than the total amount; and that spillovers from technologically related firms are significant but also depend on...

This paper is a review of recent trends in United States expenditures on research and development (R&D). Real expenditures by both the government and the private sector increased rapidly between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, and have since leveled off. This is true of both overall expenditures and expenditures on basic research, as well as fundi...

The determinants of energy-saving innovation, and particularly the roles of energy prices and efficiency standards in affecting the development of new energy-saving technologies, are exceptionally important considerations in modeling global climate change and evaluating alternative policy options. We analyze the effects of energy prices and energy-...

We find that the effects of parent firm R&D on plant-level productivity are diminished by both the geographic and technological distance between the research lab and the plants; that productivity appears to depend on R&D per plant rather than on the total amount; and that spillovers from technologically related firms are significant but also depend...

We develop a framework for comparing empirically the effects of alternative environmental policy instruments on the diffusion of new technology. "Market-based" and "command-and-control" approaches can he quantitatively compared by estimating the economic penalty that firms, through their actions, reveal to be associated with violation of standards....

This survey assesses evidence on the linkage between environmental regulation and competitiveness, and finds little support for the conventional wisdom that environmental regulations have large adverse effects on competitiveness. Studies examining the effects of environmental regulations on net exports, overall trade flows, and plant-location decis...

Concern about carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas has focused renewed attention on energy conservation because fossil fuel combustion is a major source of CO2 emissions. Since it is generally acknowledged that energy use could be significantly reduced through broader adoption of existing technologies, policy makers need to know how effective various...

As renewed attention has been given by policy makers to energy conservation issues, it has frequently been asserted that an energy-efficiency gap exists between actual and optimal energy use. The critical question is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency. This paper seeks to disentangle some confusing strands of argument that are fre...

We analyze the use of information in a repeated oligopolistic insurance market. To sustain collusion, insurance companies might refrain from changing their pricing schedules even if new information about risks becomes available. We therefore provide an explanation for the existence of "unused observables" that is information which a) insurance comp...

Most US consumers are charged a near-constant retail price for electricity, despite substantial hourly variation in the wholesale market price. This paper evaluates the .rst program to expose residential consumers to hourly real time pricing (RTP). I .nd that enrolled households are statistically signi.cantly price elastic and that consumers respon...

textlessSABStextgreaterSince it has been suggested that there is an energy-efficiency gap between actual and optimal energy use, the critical question is how to define the optimal level of energy efficiency. Five separate and distinct notions of optimality are presented.textless/SABStextgreater

Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips stock price has been predicted using the difference between core and headline CPI in the United States. Linear trends in the CPI difference allow accurate prediction of the prices at a five to ten-year horizon.

Hall (1993b) found that the market value of corporate R&D; relative to ordinary capital investment fell precipitously during the 1980s. The present paper examines this result more closely and finds that it was due both to an increase in the value of ordinary capital and to a steep decline in the absolute value of R&D; assets. The latter was concent...

We compare the geographic location of patent citations with that of the cited patents, as evidence of the extent to which knowledge spillovers are geographically localized. We find that citations to domestic patents are more likely to be domestic, and more likely to come from the same state and SMSA as the cited patents, compared with a “control fr...

The effect of firms financial condition on their R&D investment is explored using a relatively long panel data set for five high-technology industries. We find that financial condition, whether measured as cash flow, the stock of liquid assets or the ratio of liquid assets to current liabilities, does affect the R&D spending of small firms. The eff...

The pace of industrial innovation and growth is shaped by many forces that interact in complicated ways. Profit-maximizing firms pursue new ideas to obtain market power, but the pursuit of the same goal by others means that even successful inventions are eventually superseded by others; this is known as creative destruction. New ideas not only yiel...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

We explore the use of patent citations to measure the "basicness" and appropriability of inventions. We propose that the basicness of research underlying an invention can be characterized by the nature of the previous patents cited by an invention; that the basicness of research outcomes relates to the subsequent patents that cite an invention; and...

By affecting relative economic returns, infrastructure investments can induce major changes in private land use. The authors find that 30 percent of forested wetland depletion in the Mississippi Valley has resulted from private decisions induced by federal flood-control projects, despite explicit federal policy to preserve wetlands. The model aggre...

U.S. Patent data is used to characterize the technological position of manufacturing firms. Clusters of technologically related firms are identified and compared to standard industry groups. It is shown that the productivity of R&D varies systematically across these clusters, and this variation is related to the notion of “technological opportunity...

The existence of geographically mediated "spillovers" from university research to commercial innovation is explored using state-level time-series data on corporate patents, corporate R&D, and university research. A significant effect of university research on corporate patents is found, particularly in the areas of drugs and medical technology, and...

The effects of technological opportunity, market demand and R&D spillovers on R&D intensity and productivity growth are quantified. It is shown that all three factors have significant effects on R&D demand; with respect to productivity growth, it is not possible to distinguish demand and technological opportunity effects, but spillovers are importa...

This paper quantifies the effects of exogenous variations in the state of technology (technological opportunity) and of the R&D of other firms (spillovers of R&D) on the productivity of firms' R&D. The R&D productivity is increased by the R&D of "technological neighbors," though neighbors' R&D lowers the profits and market value of low-R&D-intensit...

This paper uses sales and patent distribution data to establish the market and technological "positions" of firms. A notion of technological proximity of firms is developed in order to quantify potential R&D spillovers. The importance of the position variables and the potential spilover pool in explaining R&D intensity, patent productivity and TFP...

This paper describes the construction of a large panel data set covering about 2600 firms in the U.S. manufacturing sector for up to twenty years which contains annual data on financial variables, employment, research and development expenditures, and aggregate patent applications. This data set is to be used in a larger study of R&D, inventive out...