Foreign direct investment (FDI) can benefit innovation activity in the host country via spillover channels such as reverse engineering, skilled labor turnovers, demonstration effects, and supplier– customer relationships. Using provincial data from 1995 to 2000, we find positive effects of FDI on the number of domestic patent applications in China. This finding is robust under both pooled times...

Whether diversity or specialization of economic activity better promotes technological change and subsequent economic growth has been the subject of a heated debate in the economics literature. The purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of the composition of economic activity on innovation. We test whether the specialization of economic activity within a narrow concentrated set of econ...

We model the optimal behaviour of a multiproduct monopolist investing both in process and in product innovation in a dynamic setting. Product innovation reduces the degree of substitutability between any two varieties. First, we find that R&D efforts increase in both directions as the number of varieties grows. Second, we characterise the relative intensity of R&D activities according to the re...

This paper extends the standard quality ladder model of innovation and quality growth by allowing for heterogeneous industries. This enables us not only to deal with the Schumpeterian hypothesis about market power and innovation, but also to analyze industry specific demand pull and technology push effects. In accordance with the empirical evidence, we show that perspective of large market powe...

This paper examines the impact of the outsourcing of production on the volume and composition of the home country’s research and development. We find that outsourcing decreases the process R&D of the multinational firm in large markets when it only conducts process R&D (the substitution effect between outsourcing and process R&D). Outsourcing tends to emerge as a complementary factor to product...

This paper has two main objectives. First, it estimates the impact of related and unrelated variety of European regions’ knowledge structure on their patenting activity. Second, it looks at the role of technological relatedness and extra-local knowledge acquisitions for local innovative activity. Specifically, it assesses how external technological relatedness affects regional innovation perfor...

We construct a comprehensive dataset of patent sales conducted by all US public firms in Chapter 11 bankruptcy from 1981 to 2012. We document that 40% of firms sell, on average, 18% of their patents during bankruptcy reorganizations. Innovation sales concentrate in the first two quarters after bankruptcy filing. Firms sell more redeployable and liquid patents, as opposed to selling underexploit...

We provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of the links between international services outsourcing, wages and innovation using plant level data covering the period 2000 to 2004. Somewhat consistent with the predictions of recent theory, we observe a positive relationship between international outsourcing of services and innovative activity, measured in terms of R&D, at the plant level. Howev...

This paper analyses the policy implications of licensing between producers of differentiated goods. We consider and compare two-part tariff, fixed fee, royalty and collusive licensing contracts. Under the optimal licensing policy, there will be no technology transfers if the innovation size is sufficiently small and degree of product differentiation is sufficiently low. On the other hand, licen...

We provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of the links between international services outsourcing, wages and innovation using plant level data covering the period 2000 to 2004. Somewhat consistent with the predictions of recent theory, we observe a positive relationship between international outsourcing of services and innovative activity, measured in terms of R&D, at the plant level. Howev...