In the knowledge economy, the production of knowledge and innovation play a key role for economic growth, development and technological progress. Empirical research on the knowledge economy traditionally exploits patent register data to study socio economic processes and the behavior of the actors that are involved in the innovation process. However, information in patent registers on the key individuals whose ideas, (vocational) training and behavior in the context of their firms and regional labor markets actually lead to successful inventions is limited.
The linked inventor biography data (INV-BIO ADIAB 8014*) of the Institute for Employment Research and the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition address this research and data gap by exploiting the synergies between patent data and labor market biography data that are used in labor studies.
Linked at the person level, the INV-BIO ADIAB data comprise about 150,000 inventors in Germany with daily information on their employment careers drawn from IAB data sources and detailed patent track records for inventions registered at the European Patent Office or the German Patent and Trademark Office, respectively. All inventors recorded in the INV-BIO ADIAB data filed at least one patent with the European Patent Office between 1999 and 2011 and were identified in the administrative labor market data of the IAB as employees and disambiguated using a combination of record linkage and machine learning methods.
The INV-BIO ADIAB data enable novel empirical research on the inventive activities of individuals in the German labor market and immediate economic environment in which inventions occur.
*The generation of this data set was financially supported by the DFG (project no. 329144242).
Data Versions
Data version (link to description of data version) |
DOI |
Availability |
|---|---|---|
10.5164/IAB.INV-BIO-ADIAB8014.de.en.v1 |
2019-02-06 |