Nowadays innovation is one of the main determinants of economic development. Patents are a key measure of innovation output, as patent indicators reflect the inventive performance of countries, technologies and firms. This paper provides new insights on the causal effects of the enlargement of the European Union (EU) by investigating the patents performance within the new EU member states (EU-13). The empirical results based on data collected from the OECD database from 1985-2017 and causal impact using a Bayesian structural time-series model (proposed by Google) point towards a conclusion that joining the EU has had a significant impact on patents performance in Romania, Estonia, Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia and Lithuania, although in the latter two countries the impact was negative. For the rest of the EU-13 countries there is no significant effect on patent performance. Whether the EU accession effect is significant or not, the EU-13 are far behind the EU-15 (countries which entered the EU before 2004) in terms of patent performance. The majority of patents (98.66\%) are assigned to the EU-15, with just 1.34\% of assignees belonging to the EU-13.
翻译:目前创新是经济发展的主要决定因素之一。专利是创新产出的一个关键衡量标准,因为专利指标反映了国家、技术和公司的创新业绩。本文件通过调查欧盟新成员国(欧盟13国)的专利业绩,对扩大欧洲联盟(欧盟13国)的因果影响提出了新的见解。根据1985-2017年经合组织数据库收集的数据以及使用巴耶西亚结构时间序列模型(由谷歌提出)得出的因果影响,得出以下结论:加入欧盟对罗马尼亚、爱沙尼亚、波兰、捷克共和国、克罗地亚和立陶宛的专利业绩产生了重大影响,尽管后两个国家的影响是负面的。欧盟13国其他国家对专利业绩没有重大影响。欧盟13国的加入效果是否重要,在专利业绩方面远远落后于欧盟15国(2004年之前加入欧盟的国家)。大多数专利(98.66 ⁇ )分配给欧盟15国,只有1.34个属于欧盟13国的受让人。