Inventing a New Economy

What patent applications can tell us about America's economic prospects.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Monday, Dec. 28, 2009, at 4:09 PM ET

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As the economic cataclysm of the past two years has unfolded, there has been no shortage of data to help us understand what has already happened and what might happen next. GDP growth, unemployment rates, trade and federal deficit levels, inflation rates, foreclosure rates, capital and leverage ratios—all have been paramount in our conversation.

As we continue to parse the economy and try to understand what the future holds, I want to focus occasionally on some numbers that do not typically generate headlines the way that, say, the monthly unemployment numbers do. Yet over the long run, these statistics may be a more important part of the larger economic story line. I call them "other numbers that matter."