Thomas Schaper

Efficient access to existing knowledge is essential to technical advance, yet little is known about how access-enhancing institutions shape intertemporal knowledge spillovers. In this paper, I investigate the cumulative technological impact of the CNIDR AIDS Database, the first, disease-targeted, online repository of electronic patent documents, launched in 1994. Tracing references from subsequent patents, I find that the marginal impact of the repository was largest (+30%) among patents for which the established disease-link was previously non-obvious to detect through standard bibliographic search, in line with predictions of stronger reduction of internal search costs. Further findings suggest that increased visibility and attention to more "hidden" prior art particularly benefited private sector HIV researchers, and was reflected in enhanced diffusion of technological knowledge across scientific community and geographic boundaries.

Linking scientific articles in PubMed and biomedical corporate U.S. patents, we study the role of corporate inventors who are frontier scientists, identified as authors of recent articles in top general biomedical journals. We find that corporate inventions made by such “frontier authors” are more impactful, as measured by patent citations received, more likely to become technology hits and with broad impact across technology fields. They are also significantly more likely to be internally further developed by the firm and have significantly higher private monetary value and broader claims—not only compared to those made by non-author inventors but also compared to inventions from non-frontier authors, including “star” authors. This superior impact of frontier author patents holds especially in scaled-up young biopharmaceutical firms. In order to better understand the impact premium for frontier author patents, we look as potential mechanism at their boundary spanning role. We find that frontier author inventions are more likely to use frontier science and to be first users of frontier science. And this is not limited to their own frontier science, but extends to others’ frontier science. But while frontier author patents reach their highest impact on patents referencing frontier science, this is not significantly higher compared to the premium realized by other patents referencing frontier science. And as frontier author patents also enjoy an impact premium on patents referencing other than frontier science, our results suggest that closeness to frontier science is only part of the story of the superior impact of firm patents with frontier scientists.

We investigate the impact of broadband internet diffusion on patenting activity and external knowledge sourcing. Based on exogenous variation in ADSL activation in U.K. between 2000-2007, we find that broadband access increased the number of yearly filed patents by 10-55%, depending on the IV approach. This increase was driven by easier access to geographically distant prior art as evidenced by an increase in the share of references to patents from abroad, and a 2-3 year decline in the average age of these foreign citations. Reassuringly, we do not find similar changes in the references added by patent examiners.

Despite a long and fruitful history of research on competition in economics as well as sociology, extant accounts on the role of competition in society have paid scant attention to its multiplicity: actors tend to be involved in not just one but several competitions at any given point in time. Making use of theoretical resources from sociology and economics, we propose a new conceptual framework for analyzing constellations of multiple competition in the field of science and higher education. In this field, individual academics and collective actors such as universities face heterogeneous—albeit interrelated and even self-reinforcing—forms of competition for scarce goods. The proposed framework may be applied to analyze constellations of multiple competition in diverse societal sectors where competition is only partially coordinated through prices.