Matching patents to compustat firms, 1980–2015: Dynamic reassignment, name changes, and ownership structures

This paper describes the methodology used to construct a new sample of patents matched to Compustat firms for the period 1980–2015. We compare our data to existing NBER data sets and underscore several methodological improvements, including dynamic matching, company name changes, and ownership structures. We examine how our improved match changes results obtained from the ’01 and ’06 NBER patent files using comparable samples. Overall, we find that improved patent assignment leads to slightly higher estimates of patent value in market value regressions, as well as to higher estimates of the R&D elasticity in patenting regressions.