Jesús Gorrín, Assistant Professor of Finance

"Beyond Patent Ownership: Learning About Technological Usefulness" with Rory Mullen

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Technology is central to economics, but current datasets lack the scale, scope, span, and specificity economists need. We apply natural language processing and positive-unlabeled machine learning to descriptions of U.S. patents and public firms over nearly three decades to create a firm-level technology dataset that is unmatched in its combination of these qualities. For the first time, we reveal the core technologies of non-patenting firms. We estimate the value these firms derive from technological innovation, and argue that stock market participants inefficiently process their technological information, enabling profitable trading strategies.