Biases in patent examination and firms’ responses: Evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

Empirical analysis of matched patent application data in the world’s major patent offices has shown considerable variation in patent granting probability and examination duration across different countries. This phenomenon is attributed to institutional misclassifications or patent examiners’ mistakes by some authors. Others argued that cross-country heterogeneity could also be caused by deliberate manipulation of patent examination procedures with the goal to foster native inventors through suppressing foreign patent applicants. To explore whether manipulation exists, this study presents a case study of pharmaceutical patents granted by the US patent office and approved by the US FDA. Especially it focuses on the filing behavior of pharmaceutical companies in Korea, Japan and China. The regression results show that the granting ratio of the previous applications of a foreign company is correlated with the company’s probability of lodging a new patent application, which provides a supplementary evidence of the existence of the manipulated patent examination procedures.     

The Impact of Patents on Innovation,Technology Transfer and Health: A Pre- and Post-TRIPs Analysis of India's Pharmaceutical Industry

The debate surrounding the World Trade Organization's Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) Agreement indicates that patents matter for development. Yet literature on the geography of knowledge transfer shows that knowledge is spatially sticky, suggesting that the impact of patents can be exaggerated. Using interview evidence, this paper explores how Indian pharmaceutical firms have responded to changes in patent law, including the introduction of more extensive patent protection in 2005 as a condition of TRIPs. A regime of limited patent protection for over three decades prior to TRIPs facilitated informal knowledge transfer and the emergence of a pharmaceutical industry with significant domestic capabilities. Contrary to some expectations, the Indian pharmaceutical industry has continued to grow post-TRIPs, with large domestic firms becoming involved in more formal technology transfer as part of an increasingly collaborative relationship with multinationals. This trend is also driven by a focus on the markets of developed countries, raising questions for the future sustainability of India's low-priced medicines. While changes in patent law can facilitate or inhibit a variety of aspects of development, the adaptation of the Indian pharmaceutical industry suggests that their impact must be related to the broader institutional setting, particularly the underlying domestic capabilities.     

高等教育:韩国经济原动力

韩国作为我国的邻邦,近些年经济发展势头迅猛。韩国经济的跳跃式发展,其中一个与众不同的原因是由于起主要推动作用的教育的驱动。剖析了韩国经济发展的特征及其原动力,建立了内生经济增长模型,并以韩国经济发展与高等教育发展的20年的数据为依据,通过实证分析证明了高等教育是推动韩国经济增长的原因,最终总结出韩国的高等教育对我国高等教育未来发展的启示。     

Determining factors for the adoption of e-business: the case of SMEs in Korea

This study investigates the determining factors of the successful adoption of e-business by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Korea using survey data. After the major determining factors were identified from the innovation adoption literature and were extracted by applying the principal component analysis to the survey data and by adding the country-specific characteristics of Korea, we conducted empirical analyses to determine the critical success factors for the adoption of e-business by Korean firms. The empirical results which are based on t-tests of the differences between adopters and non-adopters, the linear probability model, and the logit model, all suggest that the important determinants of the successful adoption of e-business by SMEs in Korea are: the CEO's knowledge of information technology (IT)/e-business, relative advantages and benefits from implementing e-business, governmental support, globalization strategy and the North Korean factor. Business size, the cost of e-business adoption and competitive pressure of the industry do not seem to play an important role in the adoption of e-business by Korean SMEs. The policy implications of this study on promoting e-business adoption by SMEs in emerging economies, such as Korea, are also discussed.     

The effects of patent-law changes on innovation: The case of India's pharmaceutical industry

Recent patent-law changes in India's pharmaceutical industry provide opportunities to study changes of institutional and regulatory environments on innovation and social welfare in low-income markets. From 1972 to 2004 under its process-patent regime, India's pharmaceutical industry grew to become the world's fourth largest. Indian companies were becoming globally competitive in generics and clinical testing, and moving into product R&D. Researchers have debated the effects of India's new product-patent laws' effects on these trends. The authors cover the domestic characteristics and global competitiveness of India's pharmaceutical industry. They contrast data (from 2001 to 2004) on patents in India's process-patent regime with preliminary data (from 2005 to 2008) on patents in the country's new product-patent regime. They argue that Indian pharmaceutical companies have changed their decision-making in response to changed patent laws by moving from process to product research. However, the preliminary results indicate that these changes may have hurt domestic innovation. They conclude with strategic implications for the Indian pharmaceutical industry and highlight the need for research and public policy to establish optimal social returns from product-patent regimes.     

Efficiency and its determinants in pharmaceutical industries: ownership,R&D and scale economy

The purpose of this article is to measure the efficiency of pharmaceutical firms and identify their determinants using Korean and American samples from 1992 to 2004. We document some stylized facts in the patterns and sources of efficiency change in Korean and American pharmaceutical firms. The evidence shows that ownership structure can substantially influence the efficiency of pharmaceutical firms. Especially, institutional ownership rate affects corporate efficiencies negatively, corroborating the myopic institutional investor hypothesis. The hypothesis is supported by both Korean and American samples. However, we find evidence that foreign ownership in Korea promotes efficiency of pharmaceutical firms. It is shown that R&D intensity is positively related to contemporaneous largest ownership rate and prior foreign ownership rate in Korean pharmaceutical firms. In contrast, little evidence is found on the relationship between ownership structure and R&D intensity in the American pharmaceutical industry. These empirical results are robust even after we check the causal links among efficiency, R&D and ownership.     

How should firms carry out technological diversification to improve their performance? An analysis of patenting of Korean firms

This research aims to analyze how a firm's technological diversification strategies influence its financial performances, in terms of ‘technological diversification’ in broad technology sectors and ‘technological concentration’ on its own core technology, especially in the case of Korean large firms. The data used in the analysis were panel data encompassing the years between 1990 and 2006, which linked Korean firms’ patent information registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office to the financial data of those firms collected from Korea Investors Service, Inc. (Kis-Value). For the estimation of the panel data, a fixed effect model, which considers the individual firms’ own effect on the financial performance, was used. Tobin's q was used as a dependent variable representing firm performance, while ‘broad technology diversity’ and ‘core technology diversity’ were used as the focal explanatory variables. The results show that a firm seeking to have more technological assets should invest in a broad technological diversification strategy in its search for new business opportunities; it should likewise concentrate on the core technology in order to maintain its financial performance.     

Industry‐specific Real Effective Exchange Rates and Export Price Competitiveness: The Cases of Japan,China, and Korea

This paper constructs a new dataset of the industry‐specific real effective exchange rate, based on the producer price indices, for Japan, China, and Korea on a monthly basis from January 2001 to February 2013 in order to provide a better indicator for export price competitiveness. By conducting simulation analysis, we found that Korean electrical machinery firms substantially improved their cost competitiveness by lowering their production costs during the Korean won appreciation period, while Japanese firms' large plant investment caused by management misjudgments led to excessive production capacity, which resulted in the deterioration of Japanese export competitiveness. A structural vector autoregression analysis also reveals that industry differences of cost competitiveness as well as nominal exchange rate changes have significant impact on export performances of Japan and Korea.     

Gulf Cooperation Council Oil Exporters and the Future of the Dollar

How has industrial restructuring and technological upgrading in South Korea undertaken in the post-crisis era impacted on the state's capacity to guide strategic industry development? The latest reincarnation of the ‘end of the developmental state’ thesis proposes that industry policies are losing their strategic long-term oriented character due to the state's lack of legitimacy to play a guiding role after the economic recovery. I test this view in light of the Korean state's role, since the early 2000s, in the promotion of a new mobile communications software standard known as the Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability (WIPI). I argue that the Korean state retains a strategic long-term approach to techno-industrial governance. The argument is developed through examining how bureaucratic actors gained the legitimacy to challenge Qualcomm, the strategy involved in promoting WIPI, and how the bureaucracy supported domestic firms under an increasingly open international trading environment. The findings reveal the state's ability to renew its legitimacy to play a developmental role through re-articulating policy goals from catching-up to nurturing innovation. Furthermore, the state has experimented with new forms of cooperation between government and business to nurture the growth of new infant technological growth sectors such as telecommunications.     

A great wall of patents: What is behind China's recent patent explosion?

China's patent surge, documented in this paper, is seemingly paradoxical given the country's weak record of protecting intellectual property rights. Using a firm-level data set that spans the population of China's large and medium-size industrial enterprises, this paper explores the factors that account for China's rising patent activity. While the intensification of research and development in the Chinese economy tracks with patenting activity, it explains only a fraction of the patent explosion. The growth of foreign direct investment in China is prompting Chinese firms to file for more patent applications. Amendments to the patent law that favor patent holders and ownership reform that has clarified the assignment of property rights also emerge as significant sources of China's patent boom. These results are robust to alternative estimation strategies that account for over-dispersion in the patent counts data and firm heterogeneity.     

Examining technological competition between BMW and Hyundai in the Korean car market

The Korean car market has increased in size. BMW and Hyundai are the top-ranked imported and domestic vehicle brands in Korea, respectively. Thus, it is important to understand these companies and the Korean car market, because technology is most significant in the vehicle industry. In this paper, we compare BMW with Hyundai from the technological perspective. Our research is focused on an analysis of the technological competition between BMW and Hyundai based on their developed technologies. We use all BMW and Hyundai patents from worldwide patent databases to analyse the two companies’ technologies. In addition, we apply statistical methods and machine learning algorithms to the patent analysis. In our conclusion, we show the technological differences and competition between BMW and Hyundai, and find their relative strengths and weaknesses.     

Popular Reaction to the Intervention by the IMF in the Korean Economic Crisis

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has played an important role in restructuring the Korean economy over the past three years. Relying upon survey data collected in 1998 and 1999, we explore the role of the IMF in Korea as perceived by its citizens. In the eyes of the Korean people, the IMF helped their economy to recover from the crisis. However, those Koreans who experience a decline in their income are critical of the IMF's role in their economy. Finally, our analysis reveals that the generally pro-IMF orientation of most Korean people has little to do with their support for a market-oriented reform program.     

Appropriation Of Returns From Technological Assets And The Values Of Patents And R&D In Japanese High-Tech Firms †

This paper investigates the extent that technological assets contribute to the value of the firm, using the sample of 90 Japanese firms in pharmaceutical, chemical, and electrical equipment industries. We use the firm's R&D expenditures and the number of patents (in stock) as the measures of its technological assets and show that the relative usefulness of these two measures varies across industries. Particularly, Tobin's q is positively related to the technological assets most strongly in the pharmaceutical industry. It is also most sensitive in this industry to the level of patent stock, coinciding with the view that drug patents are more effective than other patents as a means of appropriating returns from innovation. The communications equipment industry is also characterized by its q's dependence on patent stock. In addition, this industry's q is particularly sensitive to the level of net R&D investment in the most recent year, presumably because of the rapid technological progress in this industry.     

DOES THE GRAVITY MODEL EXPLAIN SOUTH KOREA'S TRADE FLOWS?*

This paper applies the gravity model to explain South Korea's bilateral trade flows and to extract practical trade policy applications. A trade structure and an Asian‐Pacific trade network are included in the gravity equation to characterize the peculiarity of South Korea's trade patterns. The empirical result shows that South Korea's trade follows a Heckscher–Ohlin model more than an increasing returns or a product differentiation model. South Korea has large unrealized trade potentials with Japan and China, suggesting that they are desirable partners for an FTA. North–South Korean trade will expand markedly if bilateral relation normalizes and North Korea participates in APEC.     

“后疫情时代”韩国国家新政及启示

为应对新冠肺炎疫情给韩国经济和社会带来的负面影响、顺利完成经济结构转型升级、缓解两极分化严重的情况,韩国政府制定了《韩版新政综合规划》,以将韩国发展为智慧国家、绿色国家、温馨国家,并推动韩国在全球政治经济格局中处于重要位置。本文旨在通过分析《韩版新政综合规划》的主要内容,为我国提供政策借鉴。     

The United States Boom, 'Clintonomics' and the New Economy Doctrine: A Neo-Gramscian Contribution

The financial crisis that struck South Korea with such ferocity in mid 1997 appeared to take many by surprise. Throughout the 1990s and up until the onset of the crisis, foreign lenders demonstrated their confidence in the Korean economy by literally pouring capital into the country, swelling foreign debt to unprecedented levels. Such confidence was bolstered by the affirmations of international credit rating agencies that attached positive ratings to the Korean economy right up until mid 1997. No one, it seemed, at home or abroad, believed that the Korean star that had risen so quickly and shone so brilliantly could fall as far and as fast as it did. However, barely had the dust settled behind the ‘electronic herd's’ mass exodus when tales of the ‘inherent instabilities’ of the Korean economy began to emerge. The Korean government bore the brunt of heaviest international criticism, its ‘interventionist’ financial policies widely blamed for distorting the market mechanism, leading to the misallocation of economic resources and ultimately precipitating the crisis. Such interpretations of Korea's crisis have, however, since been called into question on numerous grounds.     

North Korea: Sanctions,Engagement and Strategic Reorientation

This paper examines the roles that sanctions, and inducements might play in resolving the North Korea problem. It finds that while the “maximum pressure” narrative is plausible, the evidence to substantiate it is thin. Likewise, the North Korean regime is aware of the potentially constraining (or even destabilizing) political implications of cross‐border economic integration and has acted to structure engagement in ways to blunt its transformative impact. Maximizing the transformative possibilities of engagement will require conscious planning by North Korea's partners. Multilateral guidelines and voluntary codes on corporate conduct could be used to anchor this process, but they will only be effective if there is greater political commitment to such norms than has been witnessed to date. Without such commitments, engagement risks enabling North Korea's doctrine of the parallel development of the economy and weapons of mass destruction.     

From Imitation to Innovation: The Evolution of R&D Capabilities and Learning Processes in the Indian Pharmaceutical Industry

Since the mid 1990s the Indian pharmaceutical industry has emerged as a leading supplier of generic drugs to both developing and developed countries.The movement of the Indian pharmaceutical industry along the R&D value chain represents a remarkable shift from an importer to an innovator of drugs. The Indian government's industrial and technology policies along with changes in regulation of intellectual property rights played a crucial role in shaping this development of R&D capability. Using the 'capability creation model' this paper discusses the learning processes and stages involved in this dramatic accumulation of technological capability. This analysis shows that the Indian pharmaceutical industry has followed a trajectory from duplicative imitation to creative imitation to move up the value chain of pharmaceutical R&D. Finally as a result of changes in patent law the industry is learning to develop capabilities in innovative R&D. The basic and intermediate technological capabilities gained from imitative learning gave these firms a solid base for development of competence in advanced innovative R&D. These findings have implications for government policies as well as firm strategies in other developing countries albeit with some limitations due to global harmonisation of patent laws being promoted by the World Trade Organization.     

The switchover to digital broadcasting in Korea

This study investigates the development of Korean digital TV transition by tracing the interaction between social and technological entities from various perspectives at different developmental stages. A socio-technical analysis examines the dynamic interactions among the stakeholders in the switchover to digital broadcasting, showing how the various actions taken by leading stakeholders affect diverse groups of stakeholders. The overall findings show that Korean digital TV transition is the outcome of a proactive strategy by industry stakeholders and the Korean government's top–down policy of supporting such a transition. It is argued that the policy of a top–down transition, which overlooks coordination among stakeholders, harms consumers and hinders effective and sustainable development. The case of Korea has implications for other countries that are pursuing digital transition strategies.     

药品专利链接制度建构的中国方案：理论、原则与路径

药品专利链接制度作为专利纠纷的早期解决机制，解决了药品上市行政许可与专利权保护的衔接机制问题,该制度的创设遵循我国私有财产不受侵犯的宪法原则。制度构建应以法益衡平理念为基本指导原则，结合我国药品监管体系、医药产业政策和专利行政、司法保护运行机制设计相关内容，该制度构建涉及行政权、财产权、健康权之间的冲突与协调问题。我国具体制度设计应遵循生命健康权优先保护、合理保护、效率与公平兼顾协调3个原则，重点调和不同利益主体之间的紧张关系。除科学设置药品上市目录集、专利声明、暂缓审批期、首仿药市场独占期外，还应注重药品专利链接制度与药品试验例外、专利诉讼、专利行政处理、强制许可等制度的协调与衔接。