The total number of patents produced by a country (or the number of patents produced per capita) is often used as an indicator for innovation. Here we present evidence that the distribution of patents amongst applicants within many OECD countries is well-described by power laws with exponents that vary between 1.66 (Japan) and 2.37 (Poland). Using simulations based on simple preferential attachment-type rules that generate power laws, we find we can explain some of the variation in exponents between countries, with countries that have larger numbers of patents per applicant generally exhibiting smaller exponents in both the simulated and actual data. Similarly we find that the exponents for most countries are inversely correlated with other indicators of innovation, such as R&D intensity or the ubiquity of export baskets. This suggests that in more advanced economies, which tend to have smaller values of the exponent, a greater proportion of the total number of patents are filed by large companies than in less advanced countries.
Is Europe Evolving Toward an Integrated Research Area?
一体化的欧洲研究区（ERA）是更具竞争力和开放的欧洲研发体系的关键组成部分。然而，欧盟特定的一体化政策，旨在克服与国家边界相关的创新障碍的影响还没有得到很好的理解。在这里，我们分析了1986-2010年25年间提交给欧洲专利局（EPO）的2.4 x 10^6项专利申请，以及ISI Web of Science的2.6 x 10^5项记录样本，以定量衡量边界在国际研发合作和流动中的作用。根据这些数据，我们为分析的每一年构建了五个不同的网络：（i）专利共同发明人网络，（ii）出版物共同作者网络，（iii）共同申请人专利网络，（iv）专利引用网络和（v）专利流动网络。我们使用网络科学和计量经济学的方法进行跨时间的比较分析，并在欧盟和非欧盟国家之间，以确定欧盟一体化政策产生的“待遇效应”。使用非欧盟国家作为对照组，我们提供的定量证据表明，尽管几十年来努力建立一个欧洲研究区，在专利和出版的全球趋势上几乎没有整合。这一分析提供了具体的证据，表明欧洲仍然是一个国家创新体系的集合体。
