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on Technology and Industrial Dynamics |
| By: | Annette Alstadsæter (University of Oslo); Salvador Barrios (European Commission JRC-IPTS); Gaetan Nicodeme (European Commission DG TAXUD); Agnieszka Maria Skonieczna (European Commission DG TAXUD); Antonio Vezzani (European Commission JRC-IPTS) |
| Abstract: | Patent boxes have been heavily debated for their role in corporate tax competition. This paper uses firm-level data for the period 2000-2011 for the top 2,000 corporate research and development (R&D) investors worldwide to consider the determinants of patent registration across a large sample of countries. Importantly, we disentangle the effects of corporate income taxation from the tax advantage of patent boxes. We also exploit a new and original dataset on patent box features such as the conditionality on performing research in the country, and their scope. We find that patent boxes have a considerable effect on attracting patents, mostly because of their favourable tax treatment, especially for high-quality patents. Patent boxes with a large scope in terms of tax base definition also have stronger effects on the location of patents. The size of the tax advantage offered through patent box regimes is found to deter local innovative activities, whereas R&D development conditions tend to attenuate this adverse effect. Our simulations show that, on average, countries imposing such development conditions tend to grant a tax advantage that is slightly greater than optimal from a local R&D impact perspective. |
| Keywords: | Corporate taxation; patent boxes; location; patents; R&D; nexus approach |
| JEL: | F21 F23 H25 H73 O31 O34 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:wpaper:201506&r=all |
| By: | Joëlle Noailly; David Ryfisch |
| Abstract: | This paper presents novel empirical evidence on the internationalization of green R&D by multinational firms (MNCs), as measured by patents data. Using data on inventors’ addresses for the set of 1,200 MNCs firms patenting in green technologies over the 2004-2009 period, we find that about 17% of green patents result from MNCs R&D investments conducted outside their home countries. MNCs tend to locate their foreign green R&D activities in other OECD markets and in China, in particular in lightings and solar technologies. The empirical analysis reveals that the probability of conducting green R&D abroad increases with the host country’s stringency of environmental regulation, market size and (green) R&D intensity. Also, relatively lower wages for scientists and engineers, and stronger protection for intellectual property rights in the host country increase the likelihood for MNCs to offshore green R&D. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of this changing global innovation landscape. |
| Keywords: | Energy; R&D; Multinationals; Globalization. |
| JEL: | Q4 Q55 O33 |
| Date: | 2014–02–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gii:ciesrp:cies_rp_33&r=all |
| By: | Fabio Montobbio (Università di Torino (Italy), CRIOS – Università L. Bocconi, Milano (Italy)); Ilaria Solito (Laboratoire RITM, Université Paris Sud, Faculté Jean Monnet (France)) |
| Abstract: | This paper aims at analyzing whether environmental management systems can spur innovation at firm level, by providing new empirical evidence on the relationship between EMAS (Eco Management and Audit Scheme) and patented innovation. In applying a Negative Binomial model with Fixed Effect, we estimate the number of granted patents using EMAS as key explanatory variable. The relationship between EMAS and innovation is studied by using an original panel database composed by 30439 European firms belonging to all sectors and size. Moreover, we use an original instrumental variable to control for potential endogeneity. The analysis reveals that EMAS is positively correlated with innovation at firm level, although the results vary across countries and sectors. |
| Keywords: | Innovation; Environmental management systems; Patents; Eco-Management and Audit Scheme |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:srt:wpaper:1615&r=all |
| By: | TSUKADA Naotoshi; NAGAOKA Sadao |
| Abstract: | This paper analyzes how co-inventions with foreign residents and/or foreign-born inventors contribute to the inventive performance, using the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications. We find that combining inventors across borders and nationalities have become important in major industrialized countries, especially in the sectors where science is important for inventions. Both inventions with foreign-born inventors and those with foreign resident inventors have high science linkages, controlling for the sectors. We also find that the inventions based on such collaborations have high performance in terms of forward citations (but not in terms of the geographic scope of patent protection), relative to the inventions by the purely domestic team. These effects diminish but remain significant even if we control for firm fixed effects. However, these effects disappear once we control for the first inventor fixed effects, indicating the possibility that the matching between the high performing domestic inventors and the foreign resident and/or foreign-born inventors plays an important role. |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eti:dpaper:15113&r=all |
| By: | Marc Baudry |
| Abstract: | Renewable energy technologies are called to play a crucial role in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Since most of these technologies are immature, public policies provide for two types of support: technology push and market pull. The latter aims at creating demand for new technologies and at stimulating their diffusion. Nevertheless, due to the complex self-sustained dynamics of diffusion it is hard to determine whether newly installed capacities are imputable to the impulse effect of instruments at the beginning of the diffusion process or to the current support. The paper addresses this problem. A micro-founded model of technology diffusion is built to estimate the impact of the yearly average Return-on-Investment (RoI) on the yearly count of commissioned wind farms in six European countries over the last decade. A counter-factual analysis is carried out to assess the impact of policy instruments on the RoI and, indirectly, on diffusion. |
| Keywords: | Renewable energy; technology diffusion; wind power; market pull; technology push. |
| JEL: | O33 Q42 Q55 H23 C61 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:drm:wpaper:2015-18&r=all |
| By: | Alfaro, Laura; Antràs, Pol; Chor, Davin; Conconi, Paola |
| Abstract: | In recent decades, technological progress in information and communication technology and falling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domestic economies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is the extent of control to exert over the different segments of their production processes. Building on Antras and Chor (2013), we describe a property-rights model of firm boundary choices along the value chain. To assess the evidence, we construct firm-level measures of the upstreamness of integrated and non-integrated inputs by combining information on the production activities of firms operating in more than 100 countries with Input-Output tables. In line with the model’s predictions, we find that whether a firm integrates upstream or downstream suppliers depends crucially on the elasticity of demand for its final product. Moreover, a firm’s propensity to integrate a given stage of the value chain is shaped by the relative contractibility of the stages located upstream versus downstream from that stage. Our results suggests that contractual frictions play an important role in shaping the integration choices of firms around the world. |
| Keywords: | global value chains; incomplete contracts; sequential production |
| JEL: | D23 F14 F23 L20 |
| Date: | 2015–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10837&r=all |
| By: | Stefano BRESCHI; Francesco LISSONI; Ernest MIGUELEZ |
| Abstract: | We assess the role of ethnic ties in the diffusion of technical knowledge by means of a database of patent filed by US-resident inventors of foreign origin, which we identify through name analysis. We consider ten important countries of origin of highly skilled migration to the US, both Asian and European, and test whether foreign inventors’ patents are disproportionately cited by: (i) co-ethnic migrants (“diaspora” effect); and (ii) inventors residing in their country of origin (“brain gain” effect). We find evidence of the diaspora effect for Asian countries, but not for European ones, with the exception of Russia. Diaspora effects do not translate necessarily into a brain gain effect, most notably for India; nor brain gain occurs only in presence of diaspora effects. Both the diaspora and the brain gain effects bear less weight than other knowledge transmission channels, such as co-invention networks and multinational companies. |
| Keywords: | migration, brain gain, diaspora, diffusion, inventors, patents |
| JEL: | F22 O15 O31 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:grt:wpegrt:2015-25&r=all |
| By: | Kaivo-oja, Jari; Roth, Steffen |
| Abstract: | In this article we discuss the futures of work and robotics. We evaluate key future trends in the field of robotics and analyse different scenarios regarding the futures of human beings and work life. Subsequently, we presents a roadmap of robotics, which covers key aspects of industrial and service robotics, discuss technology foresight insights and inter-linkages to robotics, and identify three critical technology roadmaps: (1) the technological future of robotics, (2) digitalization and (3) ICT technologies. Finally, we analyse key challenges of future work life and labor policy in the European Union: economic, social, and political and inform readers about some important strategic projects of the European Union, especially about European robotics strategy. |
| Keywords: | Robotics,Futurology |
| JEL: | O32 O33 |
| Date: | 2015 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:118693&r=all |