Patents and innovation counts as measures of regional production of new knowledge

The role of geographically mediated knowledge externalities in regional innovation systems has become a major issue in research policy. Although the process of innovation is a crucial aspect of economic growth, the problem of measuring innovation has not yet been completely resolved. A central problem involved in such analysis is the measurement of economically useful new knowledge. In the US information on this has been limited to an innovation count data base. Determining the extent to which the innovation data can be substituted by other measures is essential for a deeper understanding of the dynamics involved. We provide an exploratory and a regression-based comparison of the innovation count data and data on patent counts at the lowest possible levels of geographical aggregation. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.