Offshoring and intellectual property rights reform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Canals, Claudia; Sener, Fuat
• 署名单位: Union College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2014.01.001
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 17-31
• 关键词: Intellectual property rights; patents; TECHNOLOGY; multinational firms; Outsourcing; Offshoring; Subcontracting

摘要

This paper empirically assesses the responsiveness of US offshoring to intellectual property rights (IPR) reforms in 16 countries. We construct a measure of US offshoring at the industry level based on trade in intermediate goods, covering 23 industries for the period 1973-2006. For each industry, we differentiate between broad offshoring and intra-industry offshoring activities. We conduct a difference-in-difference analysis using the IPR reform years proposed in Branstetter et al. (2006, Quarterly Journal of Economics). We find that following IPR reform, neither broad nor intra-industry offshoring intensities change for the typical US industry at conventional levels of significance. However, high-tech (patent-sensitive) industries substantially expand their intra-industry offshoring activities, whereas low-tech (patent-insensitive) industries do not change their intra-industry offshoring activities in a statistically significant way. In addition, high-tech industries increase their broad offshoring relative to low-tech industries, but the effects are smaller and less robust than those estimated for intra-industry offshoring. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.