arXiv subjects

Rolf Weder

Publications and source records attributed to Rolf Weder.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Towards Measuring Disruptive Innovation Across Countries

The CD index is a widely used measure of disruptive inventions. Most studies compute it using USPTO data. This creates a puzzle because the US appears less disruptive than European and Asian countries. We show that this largely stems from missing international citations. Using a global citation network, we quantify and correct this bias. The disruptiveness advantage of non-US inventors drops by 64% to 148% of the US baseline mean. The US emerges as a disruption leader over Europe, with Asia's advantage substantially reduced. Globally integrated citation data are essential for credible measurement of disruptive innovation in international contexts.

econ.EM↗

arXiv2025

Does Scientific Writing Converge to U.S. English? Evidence from Generative AI-Assisted Publications

A growing literature documents that generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is changing scientific writing, yet most studies focus on absolute changes in vocabulary or readability. An important question remains unanswered: Does GenAI use lead to systematic convergence, or a narrowing of stylistic gaps relative to the dominant form of scientific English? Unlike absolute changes, convergence signals whether language-related publication barriers are declining and suggests broader implications for participation and competition in global science. This study directly addresses this question using 5.65 million English-language scientific articles published from 2021 to 2024 and indexed in Scopus. We measure linguistic similarity to a U.S. benchmark corpus using SciBERT text embeddings, and estimate dynamic changes using an event-study difference-in-differences design with repeated cross-sections centered on the late-2022 release of ChatGPT. We find that GenAI-assisted publications from non-English-speaking countries exhibit statistically significant and increasing convergence toward U.S. scientific English, relative to non-GenAI-assisted publications from these countries. This effect is strongest for domestic author teams from countries more linguistically distant from English and for articles published in lower-impact journals -- precisely the contexts where language barriers have historically been most consequential. The results suggest that GenAI tools are reducing language-related barriers in scientific publications. Whether this represents genuine inclusion or a deepening dependence on a single linguistic standard remains an open question.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2023

Is there a secular decline in disruptive patents? Correcting for measurement bias

Despite tremendous growth in the volume of new scientific and technological knowledge, the popular press has recently raised concerns that disruptive innovation is slowing. These dire prognoses were driven in part by Park et al. (2023), a Nature publication that uses decades of data and millions of observations coupled with a novel quantitative metric (the CD index) that characterizes innovation in science and technology as either consolidating or disruptive. We challenge the Park et al. (2023) patent findings, principally around concerns of truncation bias and exclusion bias. We show that 88 percent of the decrease in the average CD index over 1980-2010 reported by the authors can be explained by their truncation of all backward patent citations before 1976. We also show that this truncation bias varies by technology class. We further account for a change in U.S. patent law that allows for citations to patent applications in addition to patent grants-something ignored by the authors in their analysis--and update the analysis to 2016. We show that the number of highly disruptive patents has increased since 1980--particularly since 2008. Our results suggest caution in using the Park et al. (2023) patent findings and conclusions as a basis for research and decision-making in public policy, industry restructuring or firm reorganization aimed at altering the current innovation landscape.

econ.GN↗