Determinants of the number of patents in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Knowledge represents an important national, regional or firm asset that creates a source of competitive advantages. However, there are no standard methods that are able to determine the extent to which an economy is based on knowledge and to measure the outputs of knowledge economy. Economists had already begun to use the number of patents to investigate an entire range of relationships, for example, to analyse their relationship to company size, investment and innovation activities. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to analyse the influence of selected determinants of the knowledge economy that affect its output (the number of patents in the Czech regions). The analysis is realized by using own original multiple linear regression model. Data for the analyses were obtained from the Czech Statistical Office's databases between the years 2007- 2011. The results confirm the importance of the human factor during the process of patent creation. The role of increasing expenditure on research and development activities was proven to be insignificant in the Czech regions. In the Czech Republic, there is a lack of studies measuring knowledge economy and its determinants. Therefore, we provide an initial analysis of determinants influencing knowledge economy.