Evaluating inventive activity: the cost of nineteenth-century UK patents and the fallibility of renewal data

It has long been recognized that counting patents offers a poor gauge of the extent and value of inventive activity, not least because the quality of patented inventions varies enormously. The Schankerman-Pakes model provides a valuable alternative gauge that utilizes the data from renewal fees which are regularly paid to keep a patent in force. This article suggests, however, that the model's application to nineteenth-century UK patents may underestimate the value of Victorian inventive activity because many patentees lacked the financial resources to implement the rational choice that the model assumes. Focusing on steam-engineering patents, it explores further problems with renewal data and the increasing rate of lapsed applications.     

后WTO时代的企业专利策略

静悄悄地专利布雷，紧锣密鼓地取证指控；既有战略上的精心规划，又有战术上的巧妙实施，外国公司发起了新一波专利大战。对于知识产权的认知，国人从“无知者无畏”，到现在的“望而生畏”，中国企业表现得幼稚且束手无策，继而产生了深深的恐惧。中国企业已几近鱼肉，但能否绝处逢生，就看我们的底气(专利筹码)和对相关规则的了解和运用。“专利诉讼”因其专业性较强而显得“神秘”，很少进行面对企业的研讨及总结。本文讨论专利诉讼的技术细节，并提供实用的分析体系。     

Official Development Assistance and Foreign Direct Investment Flows to Sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract: Foreign direct investment is believed to have a positive impact on the economies of the developing countries but its determinants are not yet fully established. This paper empirically investigates the relationship between official development assistances and foreign direct investment flows using panel data from 11 sub‐Saharan African countries for the period 1990–2003. The results show that bilateral official development assistance has a significant and positive influence on foreign direct investment flows. The results also show that trade openness, growth rate in the labor force, and exchange rates have a positive and significant effect on foreign direct investment flows. But multilateral development assistance, the growth rate in GDP per capita, the country's composite risk level, and the index for political freedom and civil liberties do not have a statistically significant effect on foreign direct investment flows. The policy implication of the positive and significant influence of the bilateral official development assistance on foreign direct investment is that the recipient countries need to formulate policies that improve their economic relationships with the donor countries in order to attract greater foreign direct investment flows from the multilateral corporations located in these countries.     

International patenting by Chinese residents: Constructing a database of Chinese foreign-oriented patent families

This paper analyzes Chinese patenting abroad by constructing a novel database of foreign-oriented patent families (1970–2012) and by distilling stylized facts about China's international patenting strategies. Patent families are a set of related patents filed in one or more foreign jurisdictions to protect the same invention. We find that by the turn of the century China emerged as major actor in terms of international patenting. Nonetheless, the share of Chinese patents which get filed abroad is still a fraction of patents filed at home; most patents abroad also only target one foreign country. Moreover, China's foreign patents are concentrated in a few technology fields and in a few firms, mostly the information technology sector. A shift is underway however to an increased proportion of filings abroad. The paper finds that the main drivers for this change are the desire to facilitate collaboration, to license IP, and to further the firm's reputation as true innovator.     

中国投资是东道国内部冲突的抑制剂还是催化剂

随着国家内部冲突取代了国家间战争成为集体政治暴力的主要形式,对内部冲突中国际维度的关注促使人们思考以国际投资为代表的全球化与跨国企业的影响。从理论上看,国际投资可能会引发冲突,也可能会降低冲突发生的可能性。中国虽然是全球第二大对外直接投资(OFDI)国,但研究中国OFDI对东道国内部冲突影响的实证文献几乎没有。作者基于2004—2016年中国对115个发展中国家的直接投资数据,实证研究了中国OFDI对东道国爆发内部冲突的影响及其作用机制。结果显示,中国对发展中国家的OFDI显著降低了当地爆发内部冲突的概率,而全球第一大OFDI国美国对发展中国家的OFDI对当地爆发内部冲突的抑制作用则不明显。在影响机制上,中国对发展中国家的OFDI显著降低了当地的失业率,有助于增加民众参与武装冲突的机会成本,降低叛乱行为的合法性与成功率,进而减少东道国内部冲突的爆发。以上发现体现出中国投资对东道国内部稳定性的贡献。但这并不意味着可以忽视中国企业“走出去”过程中出现的一些问题。     

Product Cycles, Innovation, and Exports: A Study of Indian Pharmaceuticals

This paper studies the product cycle and neo-technology theories of trade in the context of generic pharmaceuticals. It analyzes the export performance of 131 Indian pharmaceutical firms for the period 1989–2004. The results indicate that technology proxied by foreign patent rights has a positive impact on exports. This suggests that developing countries with innovation skills for process innovations are capable of penetrating international markets in the later stages of the product cycle by using patents, which were the barriers to trade in the early stages of the product cycle.     

中国自主品牌汽车产业发展与市场开拓

中国自主品牌汽车工业起步晚、底子薄,是在与外国企业进行激烈竞争中取得发展的.目前,中国自主品牌汽车已经在国内经济型、中级乘用车、SUV市场立稳脚跟,并且出口到发展中国家国外市场.在技术成果上,已经开发出拥有自主知识产权的发动机.在性价方面,自主品牌汽车具有一定比较优势,但存在整体质量不高、创新能力不足等问题.面对国内外广阔的市场前景,中国自主品牌汽车需要进一步增强实力.开拓市场.     

The `Latte Revolution'? Regulation,Markets and Consumption in the Global Coffee Chain

Coffee is a truly global commodity and a major foreign exchange earner in many developing countries. The global coffee chain has changed dramatically as a result of deregulation, new consumption patterns, and evolving corporate strategies. From a balanced contest between producing and consuming countries within the politics of international coffee agreements, power relations shifted to the advantage of transnational corporations. A relatively stable institutional environment where proportions of generated income were fairly distributed between producing and consuming countries turned into one that is more informal, unstable, and unequal. Through the lenses of global commodity chain analysis, this paper examines how these transformations affect developing countries and what policy instruments are available to address the emerging imbalances.     

Global Foreign Direct Investment Flows: The Role of Governance Infrastructure

It is widely argued that a country’s economic performance over time is determined to a great extent by its political, institutional and legal environment. We refer to these institutions and policies as the governance infrastructure of a country. We utilize newly developed indices to examine the effects of governance infrastructure on both foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and outflows for a broad sample of developed and developing countries over 1995–97. In addition, we examine the role of other forms of infrastructure including human capital and the environment. The results clearly indicate that governance infrastructure is an important determinant of both FDI inflows and outflows. Investments in governance infrastructure not only attract capital, but also create the conditions under which domestic multinational corporations emerge and invest abroad. It would appear that investments in governance infrastructure are subject to diminishing returns, so that the benefits, in terms of inflows, are most pronounced for smaller and developing economies.     

The Determinants and Motivations of China's Outward Foreign Direct Investment: A Spatial Gravity Model Approach

Abstract

The study attempts to investigate the features and determinants of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into 138 countries and Chinese firms' investment strategies over the 2003–2009 period using an augmented gravity model with spatial linkages. The respective evaluations of China's OFDI are indicative of the important role played by non-financial OFDI. At the same time, Chinese firms prefer to invest in high-tech industries in developed countries while also focusing on the extraction of natural resources around the world. The empirical findings show that the host country's economic size has a significantly positive effect in terms of promoting Chinese OFDI. Chinese firms favour a complex-vertical platform in the developed countries while they prefer a market potential foreign direct investment (FDI) surrounding the host developing countries and an export-platform FDI in the petroleum exporting countries based on the surrounding market potential effect and spatial effect. The fuel extraction motive plays a key role in China's OFDI in line with the realities of Chinese FDI strategies in recent years.     

Independent invention during the rise of the corporate economy in Britain and Japan1

Independent inventors accounted for approximately half of all patents in Britain and Japan by 1930, despite the rise of the corporate economy and the spread of industrial R&D. A mixture of patent renewal and historical citations data reveals that the quality of independent invention was high. Active markets for inventions created incentives for independents, especially in large cities like London and Tokyo, which dominated spatially. Alongside evidence for the US, the findings show that in countries with different patent systems and at varying stages of economic development, a key component of overall inventive activity originated from outside the boundaries of firms.     

跨国公司与发展中国家的社会稳定--兼论对中国的影响

跨国公司作为全球化的驱动器既给发展中国家的政治、经济与社会稳定带来正面影响，甚至成为社会稳定的一种标志，但又不可避免地产生一些负面效应。中国要在开放中坚持双赢的策略并加大风险意识，同时应倡导跨国公司承担更大的社会责任。     

跨国公司技术转移的经济效应及规避措施分析

跨国公司通过国际技术转移,对许多发展中国家的经济发展与技术进步产生了非常重要的影响。跨国公司的技术转移对东道国企业的作用主要表现为两个方面:一方面,跨国公司的技术转移有利于我国企业产品技术含量的提高,节约了我国企业对于先进技术的研发时间及资金的使用,还能消除被跨国公司控制技术的局面;另一方面,先进技术转移也会制约我国企业的技术创新能力的提高,影响到我国企业经济效益的稳步提升。因此本文着重分析了技术转移对我国企业产生的经济效应及其产生的深层原因,进而探讨我国企业应当采取的应对策略,来消除技术转移的负面效应。     

The value of invention patents in China: Country origin and technology field differences

This paper improves renewal payment based patent value model by introducing unexpired patents into the model. We estimate value of the invention patents based on SIPO records in China and compare values of patents between local owners and owners from the U.S., Japan and European countries. The study reveals that patent value from Chinese owners is much lower than that of overseas owners. This larger value gap implies important difference in motive of the patenting and R&D quality between China and those technology intensive sources usually from economically advanced countries and regions. The model developed in this study is also applied to patent data in different technical fields, successfully differing technical sectors with higher value (e.g., machinery) and those with lower value (e.g., pharmaceuticals), in terms of China market based patent records. Both applications prove that the newly developed model can be an important analytical tool for providing classified patent value on different purposes, especially in case of China.     

室温催化处理VOCs的专利分析

对室温催化处理挥发性有机物（VOCs）的相关专利的申请量趋势、地域分布、申请人、发明人、技术功效等进行分析。结果表明，目前室温催化处理VOCs处于技术萌芽期，专利申请主要集中在国内，国外专利布局较少，可加强国外专利布局，提前占领技术领地。通过对技术功效和技术要点的分析可以了解目前室温催化处理VOCs的技术热点和技术空白点，对室温催化处理VOCs技术的后续研究具有一定的启发作用。     

How Effective Is Foreign Aid at Improving Health Outcomes in Recipient Countries?

Since the United Nations’ establishment of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000 the world has observed an increasing trend in foreign aid provided by more affluent countries to developing nations. This paper examined whether foreign aid (total foreign aid and health sector aid) has been effective in improving the health of citizens in recipient nations since establishment of the MDGs. Five facets of population health were examined: infant mortality, life expectancy, the annual death rate, and immunizations against measles and diphtheria. Using a panel data set covering 90 developing countries, observed annually over 2001–2015, fixed-effects multivariate regressions with alternative specifications were estimated for each of these measures. The findings reveal that foreign aid has had little to no effect on population health since 2000. We found some evidence that foreign aid has improved life expectancy in developing countries, however, the effect is very small. In light of these findings, continued monitoring of the relationship between foreign aid and health outcomes would be both valuable and prudent.

     

A global corporate census: publicly traded and close companies in 1910

In 1910 the world had almost half a million corporations, only one‐hundredth of today's total. About one‐fifth—with over half of corporate capital—were publicly tradable, higher portions than today. Most publicly quoted corporations traded in Europe and the British Empire, but most close (private) corporations operated in the US, which, until the 1940s, had more corporations per capita than anywhere else. The 83 countries surveyed here differed markedly in company numbers, corporate capital/GDP ratios, and average corporate size. Enclave economies—dominated by quoted (and often foreign‐owned) companies—had the largest average sizes, while other nations had more varied mixes of large quoted corporations and close company small and medium enterprises.     

跨国公司限制竞争行为的行政法规制

中国在全球经济中的重要性正日益提高——在发达国家依然挣扎于经济泥沼之际,中国经济却依然保持旺盛的增长势头,当世界其他地方的消费者为就业和经济状况担忧时,中国的许多消费者却变得越来越富有。跨国公司作为国际投资的主要载体,在我国现代化进程中扮演着重要的角色。跨国公司在华投资的不断增加有力的带动中国经济融入全球化潮流,但由于国内企业实力较为弱小,难以与大型跨国公司相抗衡,近年来,某些行业外国企业凭借其经济实力在短期内迅速占领我国大部分市场份额,并滥用市场支配力的情况时有发生。     

Has political risk scared mineral investment away from the deposits in developing countries?

In reply to recent assertions of a sharp diversion of metal mineral exploration and mining investment from developing to industrialized countries, the author argues that these worries are misdirected because they concentrate entirely on foreign direct investment and fail to consider the changes in other forms of mineral investments in developing countries. This paper shows that despite the political and economic changes which have diminished the willingness of multinational mining firms to undertake new traditional direct investment commitments in the Thrid World, the share of developing countries in Western World metal mineral activity is rising.     

Surges and stops in greenfield and M&A FDI flows to developing countries: analysis by mode of entry

This paper investigates the factors associated with foreign direct investment “surges” and “stops”, defined as sharp increases and decreases, respectively, of foreign direct investment inflows to the developing world and differentiated based on whether these events are led by waves in greenfield investments or mergers and acquisitions. Greenfield-led surges and stops occur more frequently than mergers-and-acquisitions-led ones and different factors are associated with the onset of the two types of events. Global liquidity is the factor significantly and positively associated with a surge, regardless of its kind, while a global economic growth slowdown and a surge in the preceding year are the main factors associated with a stop. Greenfield-led surges and stops are more likely in low-income countries and mergers-and-acquisitions-led surges are less likely in resource-rich countries than elsewhere in the developing world. Global growth accelerations and increases in financial openness, domestic economic and financial instability are associated with mergers-and-acquisitions-led surges but not with greenfield-led ones. These results are particularly relevant for developing countries where FDI flows are the major type of capital flows and suggest that developing countries’ macroeconomic vulnerability increases following periods of increased global liquidity. As countries develop they typically become more exposed to merger-and-acquisition-led surges, which are more likely than greenfield-led surges and stops to be short-lived and associated with domestic macroeconomic policies.