Redes de copatenteamento no Brasil: determinantes regionais e estruturais das ligações nacionais e internacionais

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the regional and structural determinants of the links among regions in social networks of collaboration in Brazil. For this, we use patent database that possess information on Brazilian inventors’ residence address and on the nationality of all inventors responsible for the patent application in Brazilian Patent Office. We investigate which are the main regional determinants of the links in the Brazilian co-patenting networks taking into account variables that capture economic, technological and demographic density aspects of Brazilian regions, as well as the topology structures of the nodes in the networks. The database is provided by the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), the Annual Social Information Relation (RAIS), the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). We consider a longitudinal database for the period 2001-2011 and apply panel data techniques in spatial unit of analysis corresponding to the Intermediate Areas of Urban Connectivity, according to the concept of Regions of Influence of Brazilian Cities (REGICs). Two types of networks are considered in Brazil: the inter-regional and the international ones. Therefore, for both types of networks two approaches are applied: 1) a truncated data model is used, i.e. Tobit, whose dependent variable is given by the ratio of the number of links to the number of patents generated by the region; and 2) a Zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model is used, which considers the absolute number of inter-regional links among inventors in a certain region. The main results show that node (region) connections are more affected by aspects of local infrastructure, such as R&D level, and their position in the network. However, other local and structural characteristics also deserve to be highlighted as the economic participation of regions, as well as levels of capital goods imports and industry participation.