World efficiency in the potential production of new technologies under intellectual property assets

Abstract This investigation aimed to delineate a frontier of maximum efficiency in the potential production of new technologies under the countries’ intellectual property assets, conditioned to the main research inputs (expenses in research and development (R&D) and specialized labor in research). Using data envelopment analysis, we sought to identify technical efficiency measures reached by 74 nations in the relative use of these inputs and measure the existence of possible leftovers of inefficient inputs at the end proposed here. The results elucidate the global context of the sub-optimal application of spending on R&D and the number of researchers in different degrees in time and space, which confirms the hypothesis suggested in this investigation. In this direction, some seem to seek readjustments in the bases of these inputs, moving, each period, to the most efficient specific combinations, whereas others, however, follow the opposite path. This occurs in all income strata and, therefore, regardless of economic size. However, it is still in the poorest countries that there is the greatest risk of the non-optimal use of research inputs in the sense of producing new patented technological inventions, although this is also the reality of some wealthy nations on the planet. This mismatch between the potential capacity for the production of legally protected knowledge and the one effectively used, which makes technological progress—under the mechanism of the intellectual property of these economies—increasingly late and more complex, significantly weakening the displacement of the frontier of the codifiable and its beneficial dissemination on intellectual property systems.