Matching of PATSTAT Applications to AIDA Firms: Discussion of the Methodology and Results

26 Pages Posted: 22 Jun 2013

See all articles by Francesca Lotti

Francesca Lotti

Bank of Italy

Giovanni Marin

National Research Council (CNR) - Centre for Economic Research on Firms and Growth (CERIS); Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE)

Date Written: June 20, 2013

Abstract

This paper is a brief methodological note on the matching of Italian firms in the AIDA database with applicants at the European Patent Office from the PATSTAT database. The need to match data on patent applications with balance-sheet information stems from the importance of patent statistics as a source of information on the innovative performance of firms. Starting from recent efforts to match applicants in PATSTAT with firms in the Bureau van Dijk databases (ORBIS, AMADEUS, FAME), we added an improved cleaning routine to maximize exact matches, followed by an approximate matching based on multiple combination of similarity scores. Starting with 272,475 firms, we matched 49,369 EPO applications in the period 1977-2009. The matching covers 68 percent of EPO applications by Italian firms for the entire period and 89 percent for 2000-2009. Finally, we describe the time, sector, size, geographical location and technology distribution of the matched applications.

Keywords: names harmonization, patents, approximate matching, PATSTAT, AIDA

JEL Classification: C81, O31, O34

Suggested Citation

Lotti, Francesca and Marin, Giovanni, Matching of PATSTAT Applications to AIDA Firms: Discussion of the Methodology and Results (June 20, 2013). Bank of Italy Occasional Paper No. 166, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2283111 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2283111

Francesca Lotti (Contact Author)

Bank of Italy ( email )

Via Nazionale 91
00184 Roma
Italy

Giovanni Marin

National Research Council (CNR) - Centre for Economic Research on Firms and Growth (CERIS) ( email )

Via Avogadro 8
10121 Torino
Italy

Observatoire Français des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE) ( email )

69 Quai d'Orsay
Paris 75004
France

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