Time: 10:00 am - 11:30 am, May 29th, 2026
Speaker: Loren Brandt (University of Toronto)
Venue: Zhifuxuan Classroom, Langrun Garden, Peking University
Abstract:
We develop a new method to measure the importance of a patent for subsequent innovation, based on the use of a Large Language Model to process patent text data and a new model of the innovation process. We apply this method to study the evolution of patenting in China from 1985-2019, also classifying patent ownership using a comprehensive business registry. Our analysis yields seven novel facts about Chinese patenting. Among these are that patenting has become narrower and less innovative over time; that knowledge within China has become more important than knowledge outside of China for directing innovative activity in China; and that knowledge produced by Chinese entities within China has been more important than knowledge produced by foreign entities filing patents in China.
Speaker:
Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto specializing in the Chinese economy. He is also a research fellow at the IZA (The Institute for the Study of Labor) in Bonn, Germany. He has published widely on the Chinese economy in leading economic journals and been involved in extensive household and enterprise survey work in both China and Vietnam. With Thomas Rawski, he completed Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China's Electricity and Telecom Industries (Cambridge University Press, 2019), an interdisciplinary effort analyzing the effect of government policy on the power and telecom sectors in China. He was also co-editor and major contributor to China's Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2008), which provides an integrated analysis of China's unexpected economic boom of the past three decades. Brandt was also one of the area editors for Oxford University Press' five-volume Encyclopedia of Economic History (2003). His current research focuses on issues of entrepreneurship and firm dynamics, industrial policy and innovation and economic growth and structural change.