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Motivated by differences in innovation intensity across advanced economies, this paper presents an empirical examination of the determinants of country-level production of international patents. We introduce a novel framework based on the concept of national innovative capacity. National innovative capacity is the ability of a country to produce and commercialize a flow of innovative technology over the long term. National innovative capacity depends on the strength of a nation’s common innovation infrastructure (cross-cutting factors which contribute broadly to innovativeness throughout the economy), the environment for innovation in a nation’s industrial clusters, and the strength of linkages between these two. We use this framework to guide an empirical exploration into the determinants of country-level differences in innovation intensity, examining the relationship between international patenting (patenting by …