Talent, Geography, and Offshore R&D

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Fan, Jingting
• 署名单位: Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
• 刊物名称: REVIEW OF ECONOMIC STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0034-6527
• DOI: 10.1093/restud/rdae044
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1022-1060
• 关键词: Multinational production; INNOVATION; margins; gravity

摘要

I model and quantify the impact of a new dimension of globalization: offshore R&D. In the model, firms employ researchers across the globe to develop new product blueprints and then engage in offshore production and exporting. Frictions impeding trade and the separation of production from R&D lead to a market-access motive for offshore R&D, while cross-country differences in the distributions of firm knowhow and worker ability generate a talent-acquisition motive. I discipline the model using empirical facts derived from a new firm-level dataset. Counterfactual experiments show that the two motives can account for a significant portion of the observed offshore R&D. Incorporating offshore R&D amplifies the gains from globalization by a factor of 1.3 and generates new implications for the impacts of traditional forms of global integration, namely trade and multinational production.