Changes

'''My notes''':*'''Lerner et al . did do the adjustment correctlyadjust for citation inflation'''. Either I misread it, or was looking at a different version of the paper. The HBS Working paper version of Lerner et al (in dropbox) on p16 says: "We observe a clear increase in the average number of citations for the patents granted to the private equity-backed firms. In part, this may reflect the increasing importance of patents in later years, but it may also reflect two other changes. As the pace of patenting world-wide accelerates, the frequency of patent citations has increased. Furthermore, as private equity investments in hightechnology industries become more common, the representation of patents in technologically dynamic industries has grown. Figure 3 captures these trends, and this figure shows a clear increase in the average number of citations, as well as the dispersion of citations, for the matching patents. Hence, it is important to control for the timing of the patent grant and its technology class. To address this concern, Table 2 also reports the relative citation counts. These are calculated as the number of citations in the calendar year of the grant and the three calendar years thereafter (citation count) less the average number of citations during this period to matching patents, which have the same grant year and primary USPTO class."