nep-tid New Economics Papers
on Technology and Industrial Dynamics
Issue of 2015‒12‒08
ten papers chosen by
Fulvio Castellacci
Universitetet i Oslo

  1. What is the causal effect of R&D on patenting activity in a professor’s privilege country? Evidence from Sweden By Ejermo , Olof; Källström , John
  2. Patents Rights and Innovation by Small and Large Firms By Galasso, Alberto; Schankerman, Mark
  3. Patent Protection and the Industrial Composition of Multinational Activity: Evidence from U.S. Multinational Firms By Olena Ivus; Walter Park; Kamal Saggi
  4. Where Has All the Skewness Gone? The Decline in High-Growth (Young) Firms in the U.S. By Ryan A. Decker; John Haltiwanger; Ron S. Jarmin; Javier Miranda
  5. Innovation, Product-Cycle Trade, and the Cross-Country Distribution of Income By Scott French
  6. Intellectual Property and Innovation in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) By Stefano Comino; Fabio Maria Manenti
  7. Does green corporate investment really crowd out other business investment? By John P. Weche
  8. Moving people with ideas - innovation inter-regional mobility and firm heterogeneity By Riccardo Crescenzi; Luisa Gagliardi
  9. Internalizing Global Value Chains: A Firm-Level Analysis By Laura Alfaro; Pol Antras; Davin Chor; Paola Conconi
  10. International R&D Spillovers and Asset Prices By Gavazzoni, Federico; Santacreu, Ana Maria

  1. By: Ejermo , Olof (CIRCLE, Lund University); Källström , John (CIRCLE, Lund University)
    Abstract: We investigate the responsiveness of academic patenting to research and development (R&D) on the subject level at Swedish universities in panel data regressions. The general responsiveness to R&D is found to be higher than corresponding estimates found in US studies, especially when we adopt instrumental variable techniques that address endogeneity in the studied R&D-to-patent relationship. We also find that this responsiveness is not associated with lower quality of patents measured in terms of citations. A higher responsiveness from R&D to patenting is found in “Information technologies”, “Chemistry (science)”, “Electrical engineering, electronics & photonics” and “Chemical engineering”, “Medicine” and in “Microbiology” than in other common patenting fields. Our main result, that academia in Sweden contributes well to inventive activity support the view that the professor’s privilege may be a contributing factor.
    Keywords: research and development; patenting; academia; knowledge production functions; the professor’s privilege; Sweden
    JEL: C25 C26 I23 I28 O31 O32 O34 O38
    Date: 2015–12–01
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:lucirc:2015_043&r=tid
  2. By: Galasso, Alberto; Schankerman, Mark
    Abstract: This paper studies the causal impact of patents on subsequent innovation by the patent holder. The analysis is based on court invalidation of patents by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and exploits the random allocation of judges to control for the endogeneity of the judicial decision. Patent invalidation leads to a 50 percent decrease in patenting by the patent holder, on average, but the impact depends critically on characteristics of the patentee and the competitive environment. The effect is entirely driven by small innovative firms in technology fields where they face many large incumbents. Invalidation of patents held by large firms does not change the intensity of their innovation but shifts the technological direction of their subsequent patenting.
    Keywords: courts; innovation; patents
    JEL: K41 L24 O31 O32 O34
    Date: 2015–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:10968&r=tid
  3. By: Olena Ivus (Queen's University); Walter Park (American University); Kamal Saggi (Vanderbilt University)
    Abstract: Using data on U.S. firms' technology licensing to local agents in developing countries, this paper examines the impact of patent protection on internal and arms-length technology transfer. The effects of protection vary across products according to their complexity. Consistent with theories of internalization, we find that patent reforms enable local firms to attract more arms-length technology transfer, especially of simple products which are relatively easy to imitate. Affiliated licensing also rises among simple products, but falls among complex products. The results withstand several robustness checks, including controlling for endogeneity by using colonial origin as an instrument, and are equally strong whether patent protection is measured by its intensity or by the timing of reforms. The results have significance for patent policy in the developing world, where access to knowledge is critical. Through arms-length technology contracts, proprietary knowledge diffuses beyond firm boundaries, enabling local agents to access not only the protected technology but also know-how.
    Keywords: International Technology Transfer, Licensing, Developing Countries, Product Complexity, Intellectual Property Rights, and Imitation Risk
    JEL: O3 F2
    Date: 2015–12–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:van:wpaper:vuecon-sub-15-00016&r=tid
  4. By: Ryan A. Decker; John Haltiwanger; Ron S. Jarmin; Javier Miranda
    Abstract: The pace of business dynamism and entrepreneurship in the U.S. has declined over recent decades. We show that the character of that decline changed around 2000. Since 2000 the decline in dynamism and entrepreneurship has been accompanied by a decline in high-growth young firms. Prior research has shown that the sustained contribution of business startups to job creation stems from a relatively small fraction of high-growth young firms. The presence of these high-growth young firms contributes to a highly (positively) skewed firm growth rate distribution. In 1999, a firm at the 90th percentile of the employment growth rate distribution grew about 31 percent faster than the median firm. Moreover, the 90-50 differential was 16 percent larger than the 50-10 differential reflecting the positive skewness of the employment growth rate distribution. We show that the shape of the firm employment growth distribution changes substantially in the post-2000 period. By 2007, the 90-50 differential was only 4 percent larger than the 50-10, and it continued to exhibit a trend decline through 2011. The reflects a sharp drop in the 90th percentile of the growth rate distribution accounted for by the declining share of young firms and the declining propensity for young firms to be high-growth firms.
    Date: 2015–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cen:wpaper:15-43&r=tid
  5. By: Scott French (University of New South Wales)
    Abstract: This paper develops a quantitative, multi-country model of endogenous growth, international trade, and international knowledge flows in order to understand how access to both foreign products and technologies, together, influences innovation incentives and the world distribution of income. An endogenous product cycle arises in equilibrium, in which innovative countries engage in both horizontal and vertical research, while others far from the technological frontier specialize in learning about and applying research previously conducted abroad. The effect of trade barriers on the level and dispersion of income across countries is found to be larger than would be predicted by a static trade model, and the effect of access to international knowledge flows is also quantitatively important and dependent on trade flows. For instance, halving the cost of learning reduces income dispersion by 23%, while doing so after eliminating asymmetric international trade barriers reduces income dispersion by only 10%.
    Date: 2015
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:red:sed015:1504&r=tid
  6. By: Stefano Comino (University of Udine); Fabio Maria Manenti (University of Padua)
    Abstract: The aim of this study is to provide a structured review of the role of IPR in fostering innovation and economic growth in the European ICT sector. Typically IPR analysis of industries focuses on patents. In practice, however, IPR strategies are developed combining the use of different IP rights. The scope of analysis considers this and looks at the joint use of patents, trademarks and industrial designs, each protecting a different type of knowledge-based asset. Based on these characteristics, the focus of the research is to provide an overview of the mechanisms typically employed in order to appropriate the returns from R&D investments. For each formal IPR, we briefly review the main contributions to the economic literature, both theoretical and empirical, on the rationale for its existence and the effects it generates on firms’ behaviour and market outcomes. We then highlight the most important emerging issues. In the final section of the study, we focus on the software industry.
    Keywords: Patents, copyright, trademarks, information and communication technologies, patent thickets, open source, software, mobile applications
    JEL: L11 L24 L96 O25 O31 O32 O34 O38 O52
    Date: 2015–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ipt:iptwpa:jrc97541&r=tid
  7. By: John P. Weche (Monopolies Commission and Leuphana University Luneburg, Germany)
    Abstract: Empirical studies on the link between green investment and other business investment at the firm level either focus on innovation specific types of investment or fail to consider the simultaneity of investment decisions. The analysis to be presented here offers a broad focus on different types of environmental protection investment and explicitly considers simultaneity issues, using newly created panel data for German manufacturing firms. Germany is an ideal case for testing the crowding-out hypothesis, due to its high level of environmental regulation and a significant presence of command-and-control style measures, which are especially under debate as a source of crowding-out. The estimation of a behavioral investment model supports a crowdingout of other business investment through environmental protection investment in general as well as its subcategories of add-on measures and investments in renewable energy. However, only the latter subcategory causes a crowding-out at the industry level.
    Keywords: green investment; business investment; renewable energy; crowding-out; manufacturing; Germany
    JEL: O32 O33 Q42 Q55
    Date: 2015–11
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lue:wpaper:350&r=tid
  8. By: Riccardo Crescenzi; Luisa Gagliardi
    Abstract: This paper looks at the link between inter-regional mobility, innovation and firms’ behavioural heterogeneity in their reliance on localised external sources of knowledge. By linking patent data (capturing inventors’ inter-regional mobility) with firm-level data (providing information on firms’ innovation inputs and behaviour) a robust identification strategy makes it possible to shed new light on the geographical mobility-innovation nexus. The analysis of English firms suggests that firm-level heterogeneity – largely overlooked in previous studies - is the key to explain the innovation impact of inter-regional mobility over and above learning-by-hiring mechanisms. A causal link between inflows of new inventors into the local labour market and innovation emerges only for firms that make the use of external knowledge sources an integral part of their innovation strategies.
    Keywords: innovation; labour mobility; inter-regional migration; spillovers
    JEL: J61 O15 O31 R23
    Date: 2015–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:64509&r=tid
  9. By: Laura Alfaro; Pol Antras; Davin Chor; Paola Conconi
    Abstract: In recent decades, technological progress in information and communication technology andfalling trade barriers have led firms to retain within their boundaries and in their domesticeconomies only a subset of their production stages. A key decision facing firms worldwide is theextent of control to exert over the di↵erent segments of their production processes. Building onAntr`as and Chor (2013), we describe a property-rights model of firm boundary choices alongthe value chain. To assess the evidence, we construct firm-level measures of the upstreamness ofintegrated and non-integrated inputs by combining information on the production activities offirms operating in more than 100 countries with Input-Output tables. In line with the model’spredictions, we find that whether a firm integrates upstream or downstream suppliers dependscrucially on the elasticity of demand for its final product. Moreover, a firm’s propensity tointegrate a given stage of the value chain is shaped by the relative contractibility of the stageslocated upstream versus downstream from that stage. Our results suggests that contractualfrictions play an important role in shaping the integration choices of firms around the world.
    Keywords: global value chains; sequential production; incomplete contracts
    JEL: F14 F23 D23 L20
    Date: 2015–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:eca:wpaper:2013/216728&r=tid
  10. By: Gavazzoni, Federico (INSEAD); Santacreu, Ana Maria (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
    Abstract: We provide new empirical evidence of a relationship between asset prices and trade- Induced international R&D spillovers; in particular, we find that pairs of countries that share more research and development exhibit more highly correlated stock market returns and less volatile exchange rates. We develop an endogenous growth model of innovation and international technology diffusion that accounts for these empirical findings. A calibrated version of the model matches several important asset pricing and quantity moments, which helps explain some of the classical quantity–price puzzles highlighted in the literature on international macroeconomics.
    Keywords: Innovation; international diffusion; trade; asset prices; recursive preferences
    JEL: F3 F4 O3
    Date: 2015–12–02
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fedlwp:2015-041&r=tid

This nep-tid issue is ©2015 by Fulvio Castellacci. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.