Patenting, Investment and Employment: A Cross-section Test for Dutch Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

In Chapter 8 we have studied patterns of innovation and growth for the postwar boom, using production data from West German manufacturing industry together with the Gellman innovation sample as an indicator of follow-through innovations. We shall investigate the same topic yet again, now using Dutch data. As an indicator of follow-through innovations, patent applications in the Dutch Patent Office will be taken and then related to Dutch investment and employment figures. Moreover, we shall group the Gellman innovation cases by Dutch manufacturing sectors in the same way as in the previous chapter. This can be interpreted as indicating what the relative innovativeness of Dutch sectors would have been if their innovative activities had followed international trends as indicated by innovation cases from the six ‘core’ countries: USA, Canada, Great Britain, West Germany, France and Japan, in the Gellman sample. Eventually, both innovation indicators can be compared with each other and with various indicators of sectoral growth performance.