Technological evolution and interdependence in China's emerging biofuel industry

This study uses the European Patent Office worldwide patent database and applies two-stage interactive data collection methods to reveal the evolving technological interdependence for China's emerging biofuel industry. Three findings are excerpted from our empirical results. First, due to dominant patterns of business ownership, China's biofuel technology is seen as largely based on the evolutionary strength of the foodstuff and chemical fields. Second, China's biofuel technology development has evolved in the mode of ‘forward engineering’, led by Chinese universities rather than initiated by the public research institutes as in the experience of other East Asian latecomers. Third, our patent map and technology trajectory analyses illustrate that China's biofuel technology tends to be application-oriented and highly intertwined with the pharmaceutical industry since the 2000s, which evidences the development of biofuel industry as reciprocally reinforcing China's innovation capability deriving from its prominent chemical sector. By examining endogenous technology capability embedded in the national innovation capacity, this study uncovers public implications for other technology latecomers attempting to build an emerging industry while facing technology uncertainty in a transitional society.     

Patent replacement and welfare gains

Patents were chosen in an era when modern public finance tools were unavailable. The same innovation outcomes can be achieved with higher welfare, if patent elements are replaced by modern features. This paper constructs two theoretical models of product innovation and simulates the welfare effects of replacing patents with an intertemporal-bounty arrangement. We find that replacing patents with this alternative has the potential to increase welfare in the United States through reform of pharmaceutical patents by $43.9-$194 billion when measured in present value terms (this is 0.3-1.3% of annual GDP) based on simulations involving four selected drug sectors. The potential to increase welfare would be higher if applied to the larger sector of drugs as a whole. In principal, patents could be replaced in other sectors as well.     

企业数字化转型与财务绩效 ——来自上市公司数字专利数据的证据

作为“数字中国”战略的重要建设内容,企业数字化转型能否带来正向的财务回报,已成为业界重点关注问题。本研究以2010—2022年间中国A股上市公司为研究样本,创新性地使用上市公司数字技术专利拥有量来衡量数字化转型,并详细分析数字化转型对财务绩效的影响机制。研究发现：数字化转型可以有效地改善财务绩效,且该结论在经过稳健性检验后依旧成立;数字化转型通过提升运营效率、优化内部治理、降低经营风险和信息不对称、缓解融资约束来提升企业的财务绩效;大型企业转型程度越高,对财务绩效的促进作用越强。其无论是选择自主研发还是引进方式实现数字化转型,对财务绩效均具有显著的促进作用。而中小型企业数字化转型与财务绩效之间存在“倒U型”关系,其通过引进方式实现数字化转型更能促进财务绩效的提升;对于处于财务困境和竞争激烈环境中的企业,数字化转型对其财务绩效的促进作用将更加显著。此外,企业所处的外部环境越优越,这种促进作用也会越强。     

医药制造业发明专利与产业发展的空间耦合协调研究

专利与产业协调发展对实现产业创新发展至关重要。采用改进的象限图法以及专利重心与产业重心空间耦合态势模型,定量分析我国医药制造业发明专利与产业发展之间的耦合协调关系以及两者的时空动态演变趋势。结果表明,目前我国医药制造业发明专利与产业发展间存在明显偏离,耦合协调性主要表现为西高东低、北高南低的分布格局;近5年来,耦合协调性有所提高,发明专利重心与产业发展重心间的距离逐渐缩小,变动一致性提高。结论可为专利密集型产业、高技术产业专利与产业协调发展提供理论和实证支持。     

The impacts of innovations and standards on trade of measurement and testing products: empirical results of Switzerland’s bilateral trade flows with Germany, France and the UK

Nowadays, the impact of the measurement and testing infrastructure on economic performance and trade is theoretically and even politically widely accepted. However, there are no empirical studies on this issue. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the impact of innovative capacity and technical standards as one important part of the measurement and testing infrastructure on international trade flows and competitiveness. In order to focus on the direct causality between innovative technology and measurement and testing standards and the respective market, the empirical analysis concentrates on the trade of measurement and testing products of a country with a top position in measurement and testing technology. In its empirical analysis of Switzerland’s trade flows with Germany, France and the UK, the paper follows the approach of the pioneering paper of Swann et al. (Economic Journal 106 (1996) 1297), who integrated for the first time technical standards as a technology indicator in the estimation of UK trade performance. The trade flows in measurement and testing products from 1980 until 1995 are explained by both an indicator for innovative capacity and for the degree of standardisation. The first indicator is based on the patent applications at the European patent office. The latter uses the stocks of technical standards in the countries differentiated by their regional scope. Four different trade equations are analysed, besides an export and an import function, the trade balance and the intra-industry trade. The results clearly show that both Switzerland’s innovative capacity and its stocks of standards are able to explain its export performance in the three countries. Secondly, especially the stocks of international standards in Switzerland have a positive impact on imports into Switzerland from the three countries, confirming their positive role for fostering trade in general. Thirdly, Switzerland’s export surplus concerning the three trade partners is positively affected by the stocks of international standards in Switzerland, which seem to be an important factor for international competitiveness. Finally, the results of the intra-industry model underline the common view of the general trade-fostering effect of even national standards in the case of the trade with the three countries.     

Capital control, debt financing and innovative activity

The present paper discusses the effects of dispersed versus concentrated capital ownership on investment into innovative activity. While the market for equity capital might exert insufficient control on top managements’ behavior, this weakness may be mitigated by a suitable degree of debt financing. We report the results of an empirical study on the determinants of innovative activity measured by patent applications. Using a large sample of German manufacturing firms, we find that companies with widely held capital stock are more active in innovation, i.e. weakly controlled managers show a higher innovation propensity. However, the higher the leverage the more disciplined the managers behave.     

The coincidence of patent thickets—A comparative analysis

The growth of patent thickets—technology fields that are characterized by a large overlap of rights between different right holders—poses a challenge for innovators. Patent thickets are argued to create strong friction in innovation due to a pronounced potential for holdup. So far, we do not know whether patent thickets coincide in all patent systems or if differences exist that policy makers and managers must take into account when aiming to disentangle and to navigate patent thickets, respectively. To address this gap, we measure patent density of technology fields in the patent systems of the United States, the German patent system governed by the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA), and the European patent system governed by the European Patent Office (EPO). Our comparisons reveal both interesting differences and similarities between the analyzed patent systems. Although the United States and the EPO patent system show similar relative patent density patterns across technology fields, the German patent system strongly differs from the previous two. This implies that such deviations need to be taken into account by policy makers when considering regulatory measures as well as by companies in their intellectual property strategy.     

Mobility of knowledge and local innovation activity

This paper studies the diffusion of knowledge and its consequences for local innovation production. In a common framework, we analyze the geographic reach of different channels of knowledge flows that thus far have been studied separately in the literature. To jointly estimate these flows, we develop and apply novel econometric techniques appropriate to the nature of the data. We find that geographic along with technological proximity to be more essential to the operation of market than to non-market channels of knowledge flows. External accessible disembodied knowledge has a strong positive effect on local innovation production that is larger than that of embodied knowledge.     

Global Influences on U.S. Auto Innovation

There is a growing interest in the role that patents in one country have on product innovation in other countries. This paper contributes to the existing literature by using a firm fixed-effects model to investigate the connection between industry innovation (specifically that of the U.S. automobile industry) and a variety of micro and macroeconomic factors. Knowledge spillovers between countries are modeled using data from the Patent and Trademark Office, Census Bureau, and COMPUSTAT. The results indicate that German innovations affect U.S. firms differently from Japanese innovations: Japanese patents have a larger negative influence on U.S. auto manufacturers' patenting behavior.     

The advent of 5G and the non-discrimination principle

5G promises to be a game changer for the extended connectivity-based value chain, encompassing a much broader set of digitalized industries than previous solutions. By reshaping competition among market players and among technologies, it changes the trade-offs underlying the application of the non-discrimination principle. In this paper, we provide a unified view of the implications of these technological developments for four instantiations of this principle that span the entire digital value chain: non-discrimination in FRAND licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs), vertical separation remedies, network neutrality and technological neutrality. We conclude that overly rigid and non-technology neutral interpretations of the non-discrimination requirement would be at odds with technological evolution and would be incompatible with the objective to maximize the overall value of digital networks.