Methodological issues on workers’ mobility: A comparative analysis between patent and survey data

Camilla Lenzi
Cespri - Bocconi University

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     Last modified: June 1, 2007

Abstract
In recent years, increasing attention and resources have been devoted to the analysis of workers’ mobility and the collection of new datasets in order to appraise this phenomenon.
Most of the studies make use of information about inventors extracted from patent data.
This paper instead makes use of unique data on inventors’ curriculum vitae derived from a survey addressed to a group of Italian inventors and compares the information collected through the survey to those extracted from patent data.
Similarities and difference between these two sets of data are presented and discussed.