Nonparametric approach to patent citations

Abstract

The present article reexamines some of the issues regarding the benchmarking of patents using the NBER data base on U.S. patents by generalizing a parametric citation model and by estimating it using Generalized Additive Models (GAM) methodology. The main conclusion is that the estimated effects differ considerably from sector to sector, and the differences can be estimated nonparametrically but not by the parametric dummy variable approach.