Product Market Competition, Technology and Productivity, 1996-2005

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This study formed part of the pan-European Science and Technology Research In a Knowledge-based Economy (STRIKE) project. The UK research focused on the impact of changes in the extent of competition on innovation, technology transfer and productivity, and how these are affected by other institutional factors such as the extent of labour market flexibility and interaction in technology markets. The data collection for this project involved the matching of a number of microeconomic datasets and two datasets are available from the UK Data Archive as part of this study. The first dataset, the European Industry Level Patents Database, was created by matching microdata from the European Patent Office (EPO) PATSTAT database to Bureau van Dijk's ORBIS company accounts database. This allowed the researchers to assign an area of industry activity to the patenting information. The second dataset, the European Import Quotas Database, was created by using product-level microdata from the European Commission's Systeme Integre de Gestion de Licenses (SIGL) quota licensing website and aggregating this information to industry level.

Further information is available on the Product Market Competition, Technology and Productivity ESRC Award web page.

Main Topics: European Industry Level Patents DatabaseThe data are defined at industry level following the US SIC (1987). Information has been aggregated from a firm-level panel constructed through the matching of the EPO PATSTAT database and company accounts records from Bureau van Dijk's ORBIS company accounts database. European Import Quotas DatabaseThe data are defined at industry level following the US SIC (1987) system. This was aggregated from 6-digit product level data taken from the SIGL import licensing database. The SIGL product codes correspond closely to the HS2002 6-digit product code used by UN COMTRADE and other international trade databases. Information is recorded on the coverage of European import quotas against Chinese goods prior to the 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) accession. The coverage is calculated on the basis of the weighted value of the 6-digit HS products within an industry that are subject to quotas.