Skyline Scholars Seminar Series

Tuesday, February 4, 2025 | 1:00 pm -2:30 pm Pacific Time
Goldman Room E409, Encina Hall, 616 Jane Stanford Way

The Anatomy of Chinese Innovation: Insights on Patent Quality and Ownership

In this study we look at the evolution of patenting in China from 1985-2019. We develop a new method to measure the importance of an individual patent for innovation based on the use of a Large Language Model to process patent text data and a new theory of the innovation process. We also classify patent ownership using a comprehensive business registry. We highlight three insights. First, patents that are important for innovation have become less important on average. Second, knowledge within China has become more important than knowledge outside of China for directing innovation in China. Finally, knowledge produced by Chinese entities within China has become more important than knowledge produced by foreign entities.

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About the Speaker 
 

Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. With Thomas Rawski, he completed Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries (Cambridge University Press, 2019), an interdisciplinary effort analyzing the effect of government policy on the power and telecom sectors in China. He was also co-editor and major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which provides an integrated analysis of China’s unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press’ five-volume Encyclopedia of Economic History (2003). His current research focuses on issues of entrepreneurship and firm dynamics, industrial policy and innovation and  economic growth and structural change.

Interested in meeting with Professor Brandt one-on-one? 
Sign up to speak with him during his office hours: 
Wednesday, 1/29 or 2/12 | 2:00-5:00 PM 

Please schedule a meeting in advance and use your Stanford email to log in. 

Questions? Contact Xinmin Zhao at xinminzhao@stanford.edu