Import Competition, Destinations, and Firms’ Patent Strategies

Mark Vancauteren (), Ahmed Boutorat and Oscar Lemmers
Additional contact information
Mark Vancauteren: Hasselt University
Ahmed Boutorat: Dutch Ministry of Health
Oscar Lemmers: Statistics Netherlands

Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, No 171, 4284-4314

Abstract: Abstract International trade has undergone rapid changes in the last decades. Eastern-European countries opened up and China joined the WTO. These and many other countries that initially played a minor role in international trade have now become major competitors of traditional industrial countries. This paper analyzes the impact of import competition on patent activities by Dutch manufacturing firms for the period 2000–2010. Using a combination of patent, firm, and trade data, we show that more intense import competition leads to a higher number of patent applications. It has also a positive influence on the number of forward citations and entry of new patents, and in firms entering new technology fields. In short, import competition fosters innovation. For firms only engaged in domestic innovation, this positive import competition effect is also confirmed. Whereas most studies only consider import competition from China and other emerging markets, we also take high-developed countries into account. We find that import competition from all high-wage countries as one region together has only an effect on the number of patents and patent quality. But there is no statistically significant influence from EU member states, China, or the group of countries in the rest of the world.

Keywords: Innovation; International trade; Import competition; Patents; Manufacturing firms; Panel data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 F10 F14 O31 O32 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13132-023-01188-x Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jknowl:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1007_s13132-023-01188-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13132

DOI: 10.1007/s13132-023-01188-x

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Knowledge Economy is currently edited by Elias G. Carayannis

More articles in Journal of the Knowledge Economy from Springer, Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().