Working Paper: NBER ID: w28768
Authors: Mary Kaltenberg; Adam B. Jaffe; Margie E. Lachman
Abstract: This paper overviews the data collection procedures and resulting data for inventor ages and associated death dates. We use information about inventors from patents (name and location) and search for age and date of death information from publicly available online web directories and build a scoring system to indicate the quality of information that we collect. After applying a variety of heuristics and robustness checks, we are confident of 1,508,676 inventor ages associated with patents granted between 1976 and 2018. We also find the death dates of 206,589 inventors, though we are not as confident of the accuracy of the death information. The datasets and associated replication files are freely available at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/YRLSKU
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: O31; O34
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| inventor age (O31) | likelihood of obtaining patents (O34) |
| inventor age (O31) | timing of invention (O31) |
| age of first invention (N63) | change over decades (J11) |
| death dates accuracy (B32) | uncertainty in claims relating to longevity and patenting (O34) |