A Penny for Your Quotes: Patent Citations and the Value of Innovations
提出用被引次数加权的专利数量作为创新价值的指标，克服简单专利计数的局限，并以CT扫描仪为例验证了引用指数与社会价值之间的紧密关联。
The use ofpatents in economic research has been seriously hindered by the fact that patents vary enormously in their importance or value, and hence, simple patent counts cannot be informative about innovative output. The purpose of this article is to put forward patent counts weighted by citations as indicators of the value of innovations, thereby overcoming the limitations of simple counts. The empirical analysis of a particular innovation (Computed Tomography scanners) indeed shows a close association between citation-based patent indices and independent measures of the social value of innovations in that field. Moreover, the weighting scheme appears to be nonlinear (increasing) in the number of citations, implying that the informational content of citations rises at the margin. As in previous studies, simple patent counts are found to be highly correlated with contemporaneous RD however, here the association is within afield over time rather than cross-sectional.