 Tickets to the global market: First US patent award and Chinese firm exportsRobin Kaiji Gong, Yao Amber Li, Kalina Manova and Stephen Teng Sun Journal of International Economics, 2025, vol. 157, issue C Abstract: We investigate how international patent activity enables firms from emerging economies to thrive in the global marketplace. We match Chinese customs data to US patent records, and leverage the quasi-random assignment of USPTO patent examiners to identify the causal effect of a US patent grant on the subsequent export performance of Chinese firms. Successful first-time patent applicants achieve significantly higher export growth, compared to otherwise similar first-time applicants that failed. This effect operates only in small part through market protection for technologically patent-related products in the US, and is largely driven by expansion in other markets. The response across destinations and products reveals that a US patent award signals the Chinese firm’s capacity to produce high-quality products and credibility to honor contracts, mitigating information frictions in international trade. There is little evidence for the relaxation of financial constraints or the promotion of follow-on innovation. Keywords: Patent rights; Innovation; Export performance; Trade; Market protection; Asymmetric information; Signaling (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:157:y:2025:i:c:s0022199625000807 DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2025.104124 Access Statistics for this article Journal of International Economics is currently edited by Gourinchas, Pierre-Olivier and RodrÃguez-Clare, Andrés More articles in Journal of International Economics from Elsevier |
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