Parallel session 2, Monday 19 September 2016

1. Centraal Planbureau
Do national borders slow
down knowledge diffusion
within new technological
fields?
The case of big data in
Europe
OECD Blue Sky Forum
September 19th, 2016
Tatiana Kiseleva
Ali Palali
Bas Straathof
Netherlands Bureau
for Economic Policy Analysis

2. Centraal Planbureau
What is `big data’?
`Big data’ refers to data sets that are so large and complex that traditional data
processing and analysis tools are inadequate

3. Centraal Planbureau
The number of big data patents grows fast
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014
Earliest Priority YearSource: Thomson Reuters

4. Centraal Planbureau
Big Data
technologies are
general purpose
technologies:
- affect entire
economy;
- great societal
impact;
Banks
Chemicals, rubber,
plastics, non-meta.. Construction
Education, Health Gas, Water,
Electricity
Hotels & restaurants
Insurance companies
Machinery,
equipment, furniture,
recy..
Metals & metal
products
Other services
Post &
telecommunications
Public administration
& defense
Publishing, printing
Transport
Wholesale & retail
trade
Source: Thomson Reuters
Use of big data technologies

5. Centraal Planbureau
Only 1% of all big data patents come from Europe
Sourse: UKIPO
United States
44%
China
30%
Japan
12%
EPO
1%
All Others
8%

6. Centraal Planbureau
Research focus
Is Europe lagging behind in big data innovation?
Policy relevance:
Lagging behind in a general purpose technology can
affect productivity in many sectors!

7. Centraal Planbureau
Approach
Patents - indicator of innovative activities
Patent citations - measure of technology diffusion
Time between cited and citing patent – speed of diffusion
Control for other factors

8. Centraal Planbureau
Issues with patents citations
Differences in regulations across patent offices
 We restrict ourselves to patents filed to USPTO
 We use ICT patents as control group to correct for
administrative home bias
Citation delays associated with the technological field ICT, and
not BD directly
 We use ICT patents as control group

9. Centraal Planbureau
Data
1. PATSTAT – the EPO Worldwide Patent Statistical Database
bibliographic data (application data, inventor’s info etc),
citations and family links of 90 million applications of more
than 80 countries.
2. Derwent World Patent Index - Thomson Reuters
bibliographic data, technological content, sectorial data
3. Orbis – Bureau van Dijk
patent ownership, characteristics of patent’s owners

10. Centraal Planbureau
Identification of `big data’ patents
The term `big data’ is relatively new fuzzy definitions
Two definitions
1. Thomson Reuters (DWPI) (yields ~44K patents)
core analysis
2. UKIPO (yields ~6,6K patents)
robustness check
`Big data’ patents are identified by IPC codes and `keywords’

11. Centraal Planbureau
Cited patents
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Non Big Data
ICT patents
Big Data
patents
USA+ROW+EU
EU+ROW
USA+EU
USA+ROW
EU
ROW
USA
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Non Big Data
ICT patents
Big Data
patents
Citing patents

12. Centraal Planbureau
Estimation strategy
 We use the multiple spel mixed proportional hazard
model to estimate the diffusion lag (citation duration)
 We control for
• technological distance between patents
• firms charsteristics of the owner (size, number of
patents, etc)
• cross-firm citations
• cross-border citations
• patents quality (fixed effects)

13. Centraal Planbureau
Results
Variable Cox Fixed effects Fixed effects
+Censoring
Cross-border (CB) - 0.092***
(0.005)
0.006
(0.007)
0.007
(0.007)
Big Data (BD) 0.004
(0.006)
- 0.092***
(0.009)
- 0.094***
(0.010)
CB • BD 0.048***
(0.014)
- 0.004
(0.018)
-0.008
(0.019)
Tech.distance - 0.312***
(0.008)
- 0.309***
(0.012)
- 0.314***
(0.013)
Within firm 0.183***
(0.004)
0.226***
(0.006)
0.236***
(0.006)
*** p<0.001

14. Centraal Planbureau
Results for the disentangled cross border effect
CB
EU → USA
EU → ROW
EU → USA+ROW
USA → EU
USA → ROW
USA → EU+ROW
ROW → EU
ROW → USA
ROW → EU+USA
USA + EU → ROW
USA + ROW → EU
EU + ROW → USA

15. Centraal Planbureau
Results for the disentangled cross border effect
CB
EU → USA
EU → ROW
EU → USA+ROW
USA → EU
USA → ROW
USA → EU+ROW
ROW → EU
ROW → USA
ROW → EU+USA
USA + EU → ROW
USA + ROW → EU
EU + ROW → USA
CB • BD
USA → EU •BD
ROW → EU • BD
USA + ROW → EU •BD
- 0.053**
(0.017)
- 0.092**
(0.028)
- 0.130**
(0.046)
0.028 (0.053)
0.324** (0.124)
- 0.230 (0.156) ** p<0.01

16. Centraal Planbureau
Discussion of the results
 Big data technologies diffuse slower than ICT
 No delay in `big data’ innovation in Europe compared to ICT
 Within-firm citations are faster (Griffith et al. 2014)
 Citation delay increases with the technological distance
(Griffith et al. 2014)