Interregional mobility, productivity and the value of patents for prolific inventors in France, Germany and the UK

Riad Bouklia-Hassane (1) , William Latham (2) , Christian Le Bas (3) , Dmitry Volodin (2)

1 LEFI - Laboratoire d'Economie de la Firme et des Institutions
2 Department of Economics, University of Delaware
3 GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne

Regional creative resources include inventors. Policies conducive to inventors' productivity or attracting productive inventors promote regional development. We build on prior work on inventor mobility and productivity, analyzing German, French and British patents filed in the US by 7,500 "prolific" inventors (fifteen or more inventions). We measure inventor mobility across regions, companies and technologies. We analyze the relationships among mobility, productivity and value. We find geographic mobility increases inventor productivity in the UK and France but not in Germany and geographic mobility is not related to the value of inventions except in Germany where it has a negative effect.

Mots clés: Patents; inventor mobility; prolific inventors

Domaines: Economies et finances

Riad Bouklia-Hassane, William Latham, Christian Le Bas, Dmitry Volodin. Interregional mobility, productivity and the value of patents for prolific inventors in France, Germany and the UK. International Journal of Foresight and Innovation Policy, 2011, 7 (1-2-3), pp. 92-113. ⟨halshs-00651313⟩