Dr. Felix Pöge

Articles in Refereed Journals

Dorner, Matthias; Gaessler, Fabian; Harhoff, Dietmar; Hoisl, Karin; Poege, Felix (2020). Filling the Gap - Firm Strategies for Human Capital Loss, Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings, 2020 (1), 2020 (1)71. DOI

• This paper explores how the premature death of an inventor affects the productivity and career trajectories of co-inventors. To this end, we develop and analyze a dataset covering the careers of 152,350 German inventors. The data combine highly precise employer-employee data from official social security registers with patent office information covering the period from 1980-2014. Departing from 799 registered premature deaths of inventors and the same number of matched inventors, we study how co-inventors were affected by the death of their peers. Using a difference-in-differences and an event study design, we investigate the reaction of the co-inventors' patenting activities, career advancement and job mobility. Using a number of measures and robustness checks, our results show that the premature death of a co-inventor reduces the productivity of the surviving co-inventors. The effect sets in immediately and survivors do not seem to recover from the shock in the five years following. We argue that employers will seek to retain co-inventors under certain conditions in order to continue lines of research and invention. The empirical results confirm our expectations: surviving inventors are significantly less likely to move to a different employer and are more likely to be promoted compared to inventors in the control group. These effects seem to diminish after about two years."

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst (2019). Science Quality and the Value of Inventions, Science Advances, 5 (12), eaay7323. DOI

• Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a large-scale matching exercise between 4.8 million patent families and 43 million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between quality of scientific contributions referenced in patents and the value of the respective inventions. We rank patents by the quality of the science they are linked to. Strikingly, high-rank patents are twice as valuable as low-rank patents, which in turn are about as valuable as patents without direct science link. We show this core result for various science quality and patent
  value measures. The effect of science quality on patent value remains relevant even when science is linked indirectly through other patents. Our findings imply that what is considered “excellent” within the science sector also leads to outstanding outcomes in the technological or commercial realm.
• Also published as: arXiv preprint 1903.05020
• Article: Excellence Breeds Invention, Research Europe 510 (2020), 11

Pacifico, Daniele; Poege, Felix (2017). Estimating Measures of Multidimensional Poverty with Stata, Stata Journal, 17 (3), 687-703.

Further Publications, Press Articles, Interviews

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst (2020). Excellence Breeds Invention. The Most Highly Cited Papers Feature in the Most Valuable Patents, Research Europe, (510), 11.

• Article "Science Quality and the Value of Inventions" in Science Advances, Vol. 5 (2019) No. 12, eaay7323
• More detailed online version of the article in Research Europe, which was the basis for the printed article.

Discussion Papers

Poege, Felix; Gaessler, Fabian; Hoisl, Karin; Harhoff, Dietmar; Dorner, Matthias (2022). Filling the Gap: The Consequences of Collaborator Loss in Corporate R&D, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 22-17.

• We examine how collaborator loss affects knowledge workers in corporate R&D. We argue that such a loss affects the remaining collaborators not only by reducing their team-specific capital (as argued in the prior literature) but also by increasing their bargaining power over the employer, who is in need of filling the gap left by the lost collaborator to ensure the continuation of R&D projects. This shift in bargaining power may, in turn, lead to benefits, such as additional resources or more attractive working conditions. These benefits can partially compensate for the negative effect of reduced team-specific capital on productivity and influence the career trajectories of the remaining collaborators. We empirically investigate the consequences of collaborator loss by exploiting 845 unexpected deaths of active inventors. We find that inventor death has a moderate negative effect on the productivity of the remaining collaborators. This negative effect disappears when we focus on the remaining collaborators who work for the same employer as the deceased inventor. Moreover, this group is more likely to be promoted and less likely to leave their current employer.
• Available at SSRN

Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst; Poege, Felix (2020). A Firm Scientific Community: Industry Participation and Knowledge Diffusion, IZA Discussion Paper, No. 13419.

• We study the diffusion of knowledge from scientists to firms within scientific communities. We build on a unique dataset on conference proceedings as "paper trail" of almost all relevant conference series in computer science since 1996. More than 5000 firms appear as conference sponsors or as affiliations in proceedings. Their participation is concentrated in the highly ranked conferences and their scientific contributions are on average highly cited. We exploit direct flights as an instrumental variable for the participation choice of scientists between a conference where a firm participates and other similar conferences. The participation in the same conference has a positive causal effect on knowledge diffusion to the firm's scientific and inventive activities. Additional analyses suggest that interactions and collaborations with scientists that remain external to the firm are likely a key mechanism of this diffusion. The effects are remarkably stronger the larger the firm's investments in participation.
• https://www.iza.org/de/publications/dp/13419/a-firm-scientific-community-industry-participation-and-knowledge-diffusion

Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst; Poege, Felix (2020). A Firm Scientific Community: Industry Participation and Knowledge Diffusion, Max Planck Institute for Innovation & Competition Research Paper, No. 20-10.

• We study the diffusion of knowledge from scientists to firms within scientific communities. We build on a unique dataset on conference proceedings as “paper trail” of almost all relevant conference series in computer science since 1996. More than 5000 firms appear as conference sponsors or as affiliations in proceedings. Their participation is concentrated in the highly ranked conferences and their scientific contributions are on average highly cited. We exploit direct flights as an instrumental variable for the participation choice of scientists between a conference where a firm participates and other similar conferences. The participation in the same conference has a positive causal effect on knowledge diffusion to the firm’s scientific and inventive activities. Additional analyses suggest that interactions and collaborations with scientists that remain external to the firm are likely a key mechanism of this diffusion. The effects are remarkably stronger the larger the firm’s investments in participation.
• Available at SSRN
• Also published as: DRUID19; 4936

Poege, Felix; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst (2019). Science Quality and the Value of Inventions, arXiv preprint 1903.05020.

• Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a large-scale matching exercise between 4.8 million patent families and 43 million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between quality of scientific contributions referenced in patents and the value of the respective inventions. We rank patents by the quality of the science they are linked to. Strikingly, high-rank patents are twice as valuable as low-rank patents, which in turn are about as valuable as patents without direct science link. We show this core result for various science quality and patent
  value measures. The effect of science quality on patent value remains relevant even when science is linked indirectly through other patents. Our findings imply that what is considered “excellent” within the science sector also leads to outstanding outcomes in the technological or commercial realm.
• https://arxiv.org/pdf/1903.05020.pdf
• Also published in Science Advances 2019, Vol. 5, No. 12, eaay7323

Baruffaldi, Stefano Horst; Poege, Felix (2019). A Firm Scientific Community, DRUID19, 4936. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School.

• The diffusion of scientific knowledge to industry is instrumental to technological change and productivity growth. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which firms participate in scientific communities' activities and whether this facilitates the exchange and transfer of scientific knowledge
  to firms' technological activities. We focus on two modes of interactions of firms with scientific communities: the participation to and the sponsorship of international scientific conferences. We exploit a newly constructed database comprising the set of all conference proceedings in computer science from 1996 until 2015 from a specialized computer science database (DBLP) matched to Web of
  Science and Scopus and conference ranking information. We track knowledge transfers by patent and science citations to these proceedings. First, we document that both conference participation and
  sponsorship by firms is frequent and concentrated in the events of the highest quality. Contributions of firms at conferences are of higher average quality, even within individual conferences. Second, we go
  on to find that firms are significantly more likely to cite in their patents and papers the scientific articles presented at a conference which they attended relative to comparable articles presented at other conferences. We use airline connectivity between researcher and conference locations in an instrumental variable strategy to establish causality.
• https://conference.druid.dk/acc_papers/45ci2gtnh996gaar52h23n4wfg5wfn.pdf

Dorner, Matthias; Harhoff, Dietmar; Gaessler, Fabian; Hoisl, Karin; Poege, Felix (2018). Linked Inventor Biography Data 1980-2014, FDZ Data Report, No. 03/2018.

• This data report describes the Linked Inventor Biography Data 1980-2014 (INV-BIO ADIAB 8014), its generation using record linkage and machine learning methods as well as how to access the data via the FDZ.
• Dieser Datenreport beschreibt die verknüpften Erfinderbiografiedaten 1980-2014 (INV-BIO ADIAB 8014), deren Erstellung mittels Record Linkage und Machine Learning Methoden sowie den Datenzugang über das FDZ.
• http://doku.iab.de/fdz/reporte/2018/DR_03-18_EN.pdf