Do Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Increase International Technology Transfer? Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firm-Level Panel Data

By Lee G. Branstetter. 2006

794 citations recorded by the source corpus.

One of the alleged benefits of the recent global movement to strengthen intellectual property rights (IPRs) is that such reforms accelerate transfers of technology between countries. The paper examines how technology transfer among U.S. multinational firms changes in response to a series of IPR reforms undertaken by 12 countries over the 1982-99 period. The analysis of detailed firm-level data reveal that royalty payments for intangibles transferred to affiliates increase at the time of reforms, as do affiliate research and development (R&D) expenditures and total levels of foreign patent applications. Increases in royalty payments and R&D expenditures are more than 20 percent larger among affiliates of parent companies that use U.S. patents more extensively prior to reform and therefore are expected to value IPR reform most.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Management of Technology and Innovation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/429f1a407d4adc35e99220a9c4e9c576ac44e233

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Citations in the corpus

Toward resource independence – Why state-owned entities become multinationals: An empirical study of India’s public R&D laboratories (2014, background): “Seeking resource independence from other state actors may help explain the long-standing null or negative result of domestic patent reform in emerging markets (Allred & Park, 2007; Lerner 2002, Sakakibara & Branstetter, 2001; Branstetter et al., 2006).”
Patent rights, product market reforms, and innovation (2015, methodology): “…patent rights joined the EPOrg betweenOctober 1986 and March 2004 (EPOrg 2010), and none of these countries completed the required reforms for a patent regime providing strong patent protection before 1992 (Branstetter et al. 2006; Qian 2007; World Intellectual Property Organization 2012).”
Intellectual property rights, multinational firms and economic growth (2010, methodology): “4 Most, but not all, of the countries with major patent reforms that Branstetter et al. (2006) study are developing countries.”
Financial Innovation: The Bright and the Dark Sides (2016, neutral): “Measuring Financial Innovation The literature on innovation in the manufacturing industry has focused mostly on patents (either outstanding or new ones), R&D expenditures, or share of research staff as indicators of innovative activity (e.g. Helpman, 1993; Cohen and Klepper, 1996; Branstetter et al.”
Environmental Regulation and the Cross-Border Diffusion of New Technology: Evidence from Automobile Patents (2015, neutral): “This literature has dentified three channels through which new technology flows and here patent protection is frequently used: trade in goods, foreign irect investment and licensing (Smith, 2001; Eaton and Kortum, 002; Branstetter et al., 2006).”
Openness and Technological Innovations in Developing Countries: Evidence from Firm-Level Surveys (2006, positive): “Moreover, there is evidence that technological transfers from multinational parents increase with the quality of intellectual property rights in the host country (Branstetter et al., 2006).”