By Clément Bonnet
We estimate an index that measures the quality of the patented inventions related to Low Carbon Energy Technologies (LCETs) and delivered in seven countries during 1980-2010. This quality index is built using a Latent Factor Model (LFM) that synthesizes the information contained in patent documents. We capture a unique measure of patents quality, defined here as the economic value that is imputable to the technological advance resulting from the patented invention. A robust measure of the inventive performance of each country in the LCETs is obtained using the quality index. Several insights are derived from this measure about the technical advantages of countries and the dynamics of technologies’ quality.