Competition & Innovation: Evidence from U.S. Patent and Productivity Data

Is there any evidence that innovation and technological progress are constrained by competition and fostered by monopoly power? Our results, based on a constructed dataset of U.S. manufacturing industries observed over more than two decades, suggest that this is not the case. On the contrary, using both patent statistics and productivity growth as alternative measures of innovation and technological change, we observe faster technological advances in more competitive markets. These results are robust to changes in the econometric techniques used to model nonlinearity in the competition‐innovation relationship and to alternative methods of computing market power.     

A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of R&D,Patents, and Product Innovation on Firm Performance

Because of increasing levels of competition and decreasing product life cycles, a firm's ability to generate a continuous stream of innovations may be more important than ever in allowing a firm to improve profitability and maintain competitive advantage This paper investigates several issues that are central to an examination of the innovation productivity in a firm. First, the relationship between a firm's commitment to research and development and its innovative outcomes is examined. Two innovative outcomes are analyzed: (1) invention, which focuses on the development of new ideas; and (2) innovation, the development of commercially viable products or services from creative ideas. Invention is measured by the number of patents granted, and innovation is assessed by the number of new product announcements. Second, because many inventions ultimately result in marketable innovations and because patents may provide protection for new products, the relationship between patents and product announcements is also investigated. Finally, the ability of a firm to benefit from its inventions and innovations is studied by examining their separate effects on firm performance, measured as return on assets (ROA) and sales growth. Drawing from a sample of 272 firms in 35 industries over 19 years, the results from a model of simultaneous equations provided support for some of the hypotheses, but several other surprising findings were found. As expected, R&D spending was positively related to patents. This finding is consistent with others who argue that internal research capabilities, particularly those with a strong basic research component, is key to enabling a firm to generate creative outputs. More surprising was the finding of increasing returns to scale to R&D spending. While this contradicts much of the existing research, it is consistent with economic arguments for the advantages of scale in innovation. Also interesting is the finding that, while a significant curvilinear relationship exists between R&D spending and product announcements, it is not the predicted inverse‐U but instead a U‐shaped relationship. Consistent with previous work, product announcements were found to be positively related to both performance measures. A negative relationship was found between patents and both ROA and sales growth. While these findings were unexpected, they are intriguing and call into question the value of patents as protection mechanisms. In addition, these results may be resulting from the rise of strategic patenting, where an increasing number of firms are using patents as strategic weapons. As expected, a positive relationship was found between patents and new product announcements.     

Market Power and Patent Strategies: Evidence from Renaissance Venice

This paper exploits the introduction of the first regularized patent system, which appeared in the Venetian Republic in 1474, to examine the factors shaping inventors’ propensity to use a new form of intellectual property. We combine detailed information on craft guilds and patents in Renaissance Venice and show a negative association between patenting activity and guild statutory norms that strongly restricted entry and price competition. Our analysis shows that the heterogeneity in patenting activity documented by the industrial organization literature is not a special feature of modern technologies, but is rather a persistent phenomenon affected by market power.     

基于TRIZ的建筑模板专利创新规律研究

文章选择具有代表性的建筑模板类专利为研究对象,收集大量在我国大陆地区申请公开的模板专利文献,按比例在各个子分类筛选其中30份优质的专利文献,通过运用TRIZ理论,对专利文献进行要点的提取、分析、统计,找出其中最常用的通用工程参数和发明创造原理.研究发现,模板类专利技术中应用频数较高的6个通用工程参数和应用频数较高的5个发明创造原理,对这些规律的探索有助于提高建筑业的技术创新能力.     

Innovation in the Shadow of Patent Litigation

We analyze non-cooperative R&D investment by two firms that already hold patents that they can assert against each other with probabilistic success. The market structure results from stochastic innovation and patent litigation. Depending on the level of infringement fees, we highlight positive and negative effects of litigation threats on innovation. We define an appropriate regulatory structure of infringement fees that will implement socially efficient R&D investments in the case of symmetric and asymmetric patent portfolios.     

Patent hold-out and licensing frictions: Evidence from litigation of standard essential patents

The theory of patent “hold-out” posits that frictions in the market for licensing standard-essential patents (SEPs) provide incentives for prospective licensees to opportunistically delay taking licenses with the goal of avoiding or reducing royalty payments. We construct measures of pre- and in-litigation hold-out from information disclosed in U.S. cases filed 2010–2019. Relying on both SEP and a matched control set of non-SEP disputes, we explore whether frictions in the market for licensing are associated with hold-out. We find some evidence of an association between hold-out and both SEP portfolio size and enforcement uncertainty; however, we find no evidence associating pre- or in-litigation hold-out with the international breadth of SEP rights.     

The Impact of Mergers on Quality Provision: Evidence from the Airline Industry

We examine how mergers affect quality provision by analyzing five U.S. airline mergers, focusing on on‐time performance (OTP). We find that airline mergers have minimal negative impacts on OTP, and likely result in long‐run improvements due to efficiencies. Importantly, we show that this finding is not driven by post‐merger changes in price that could affect OTP. Consequently, at least in the case of airlines, policymakers should not, as a rule, fear the negative quality effects of mergers.     

The Impact of the Entry of Biosimilars: Evidence from Europe

Biologics represent a substantial and growing share of the U.S. drug market. Traditional “small molecule” generics quickly erode the price and share of the branded product upon entry, however only a few biosimilars have been approved in the US since 2015, thereby largely preserving biologics from competition. We analyze European markets, which have had biosimilar competition since 2006. Using our own survey, we analyze how market features and public policies predict biosimilar entry, price, and penetration, finding significant heterogeneity across countries and products. Effective buyer institutions are associated with increased biosimilar penetration. Our estimates can inform ongoing policy discussions.     

Federal Home Loan Bank Advances and Bank and Thrift Holding Company Risk: Evidence from the Stock Market

Using bivariate GARCH models of stock portfolio returns and risk, we find that bank and thrift holding companies that relied the most on Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances exhibited less total risk and market risk than those that relied on them the least between 2001 and 2012. When we control for differences in holding company size, stock trading volume, residential mortgage lending, and holding company type (bank vs. thrift), the most FHLB‐reliant holding companies sustain the aforesaid risk advantages except during the crisis of 2007–2009, when they exhibit greater idiosyncratic risk. The latter finding suggests that investors perceived the high reliance of the borrowing institutions on advances as a sign of distress. Portfolios that consist of only bank holding companies show qualitatively similar results.     

政府监管对银行稳健性的影响研究——基于中国上市商业银行的实证检验

以2006～2012年16家上市银行为样本,实证分析了特许权价值、资本监管、隐性保险对银行稳健性的影响。研究结果表明：特许权价值对银行风险存在自律效应,对银行绩效和银行流动性没有显著影响;资本监管能够降低银行风险,然而却降低了银行流动性,对银行盈利性没有显著影响;隐性保险制度对于稳健性差的银行保护较多;银行规模越大,银行稳健性越好,即存在“大而不倒”的情况;资本杠杆和经营杠杆对银行稳健性的影响不大：次贷危机对银行稳健性的影响不大,但金融危机对银行稳健性的影响依然存在。     

The Impact of Size and Age on Firm-Level Performance: Some Evidence from India

Using contemporary data for an extensive sample of 1020 Indian firms, this paper investigates the impacts that size and age of firms have on firm-level productivity and profitability. In India older firms are found to be more productive and less profitable, whereas the larger firms are, conversely, found to be more profitable and less productive. These performance differences are explained as arising from the market-restricting industrial policies that have been followed in India over the past three decades.     

中国汽车产业燃油经济性标准与诱导性技术创新研究

本文从汽车特征、汽油价格和燃油效率技术入手,探求我国近年来建立的燃油经济性管制对汽车制造企业的燃油经济性技术是否产生诱导性创新。通过建立理论模型,并运用结构方程模型的方法实证检验后发现：包括整车重量等在内的汽车特征对燃油经济性存在正向影响,同时,管制所诱导的燃油效率技术的创新也对燃油经济性提升具有正向影响。因此,汽车制造企业应对政府燃油经济性管制的途径除了考虑优化整车质量、功率/重量、变速器类型、车辆种类和排量等汽车传统特征这个途径外,还应着重考虑燃油效率技术的研发,当前,国内各大汽车制造企业均投入大量资源,研发新能源汽车即为明证。此外,我国汽油价格虽然对燃油经济性也具有正向影响,但微乎其微,这说明消费者考虑到汽油价格不断上涨,用车成本不断增加,也会给汽车制造企业和政府管制带来压力,迫使其从产业和市场的持续发展出发,做出一些思考与行动,只是这种作用在当前还体现得不够显著。     

腐败对创新能力差距的影响：来自于中国的证据

腐败对创新究竟产生了怎样的影响还没有受到经济学界足够的关注,但这一问题会影响到整个国家的区域经济协调发展。利用万广华发展的以回归为基础的分解框架,考察了1993年～2004年地区创新能力的现状,估计了影响创新能力差距的各个因素对整个差距的贡献率,特别强调了腐败的影响。发现,地区创新能力差距呈现波动的趋势,腐败程度对创新能力差距的贡献率显著为正,并且随着时间而加强;地理位置、科研投入、市场化程度对于创新能力差距具有显著的贡献,而外商直接投资和开放度的贡献不明显。     

Nonmimetic Knowledge and Innovation Performance: Empirical Evidence from Developing Countries

The knowledge‐based view suggests that the innovative performance of a firm is a function of the utilization and recombination of internal and external knowledge. The process of knowledge utilization and recombination to create new products can occur internally, through research and development activities, as well as externally, by making investments in creating links with suppliers, universities, customers, and a wide range of actors in the innovation system. This study focuses on the impact of unique, nonmimetic external knowledge, which is defined as unique technological knowledge that is not tapped by other firms in the new venture's operating environment, on the new venture's innovative performance. The purpose of the research is to investigate whether firms really benefit from utilizing and recombining unique, nonmimetic knowledge in creating innovative products in a developing country context. Drawing on the knowledge‐based view and institutional theory, this study argues that entrepreneurs in their utilization and recombination of unique, nonmimetic knowledge are not always successful at creating new products. The empirical context is drawn from the Enterprise Survey produced by the Investment Climate Group of the World Bank. The findings based on a large sample of new ventures in developing countries reveal a curvilinear relationship with marginal diminishing returns between the degree of unique, nonmimetic knowledge and innovative performance. The results also show significant moderating effects of strategic product planning and economic and regulatory policy uncertainty. Specifically, strategic product planning helps in converting very unique, nonmimetic knowledge into new products. In addition, policy uncertainty can also positively moderate the process of recombining and converting unique, nonmimetic knowledge into new products. This study provides a more complete account of how unique, nonmimetic external knowledge affects innovative performance of new ventures in developing countries.     

Impact of modern agricultural technologies on smallholder welfare: Evidence from Tanzania and Ethiopia

This paper evaluates the potential impact of adoption of improved legume technologies on rural household welfare measured by consumption expenditure in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. The study utilizes cross-sectional farm household level data collected in 2008 from a randomly selected sample of 1313 households (700 in Ethiopia and 613 in Tanzania). The causal impact of technology adoption is estimated by utilizing endogenous switching regression. This helps us estimate the true welfare effect of technology adoption by controlling for the role of selection problem on production and adoption decisions. Our analysis reveals that adoption of improved agricultural technologies has a significant positive impact consumption expenditure (in per adult equivalent terms) in rural Ethiopia and Tanzania. This confirms the potential role of technology adoption in improving rural household welfare as higher consumption expenditure from improved technologies translate into lower poverty, higher food security and greater ability to withstand risk. An analysis of the determinants of adoption highlighted inadequate local supply of seed, access to information and perception about the new cultivars as key constraints for technology adoption.     

How to Count Patents and Value Intellectual Property: The Uses of Patent Renewal and Application Data

Patent counts are very imperfect measures of innovative output. This paper discusses how additional data—the number of years a patent is renewed and the number of countries in which protection for the same invention is sought—can be used to improve on counts in studies that require a measure of the extent of innovation. Simple weighting schemes are proposed, which may remove half of the noise in patent counts as a measure of innovative output. We describe models of the patent application and renewal processes whose parameter estimates can be used to assess the value of the proprietary rights created by the patent laws. We illustrate their use with estimates of how the value of patent protection would vary under alternative legal rules and renewal fees and with estimates of the international flows of returns from the patent system. Recent progress in the development of databases has increased the potential for this type of analysis.     

利率市场化对中国商业银行的影响及对策

中国为顺应世界潮流,在不断进行利率市场化的改革。在利率市场化的大背景下,对中国的商业银行会带来一系列的影响。文章首先分析了中国进行利率市场化改革的必要性,然后,在中国当前改革的背景下,分析了利率市场化对商业银行带来的机遇和挑战,最后,为商业银行提出了对策。     

Adoption of a Process Innovation with Learning-by-Doing: Evidence from the Semiconductor Industry

This article analyzes the adoption of a new process technology in the global semiconductor manufacturing industry. The paper extends research on the relationship between learning-by-doing and technology adoption by examining the stability of learning effects across technological generations. While the results indicate that production experience with the immediately preceding technological generation is associated with a higher likelihood of adoption, we find no evidence that experience with older technologies or regional knowledge spillovers influence adoption. Finally, the results indicate that large firms and memory manufacturers have a higher likelihood of adoption than small firms and non-memory manufacturers, respectively.     

监管新规对我国商业银行的影响

2008年金融危机全面爆发后,我国实施了一系列新的监管制度,旨在控制潜在的风险。其主要内容是提高资本充足率、拨备率、限制贷款规模和速度,增加超额资本等。分析这些新的监管规则时发现,监管新规虽然能够抑制商业银行亲周期效应,提高银行体系的安全性;但也增加了商业银行的资本压力,削弱了其盈利能力。