 Foreign competition and innovationElhanan Helpman Journal of International Economics, 2024, vol. 152, issue C Abstract: Empirical studies have found that enhanced foreign competition can encourage or discourage innovation. To address this relationship, I examine a market structure in which a small number of large multi-product oligopolists compete with a large number of small single-product firms in the same industry. The single-product firms are short-lived while the multi-product firms live forever, and the large firms invest in innovation in order to enlarge their product spans. All firms export. I show that an increase in the competitiveness of foreign firms can increase or reduce innovation efforts of a large multi-product firm. Moreover, changes in the incentives to innovate can be different for more-productive and less-productive oligopolists. As a result, aggregate sectoral innovation may rise or decline, depending on the productivity distribution of the oligopolists. I also show that changes in short-term operating profits may not be aligned with changes in the incentives to innovate. Keywords: Trade; Innovation; Firm dynamics; Product span (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:inecon:v:152:y:2024:i:c:s002219962400134x DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2024.104007 Access Statistics for this article Journal of International Economics is currently edited by Martin Uribe and Costas Arkolakis More articles in Journal of International Economics from Elsevier |
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