Will Stronger Intellectual Property Rights Increase International Technology Transfer? Empirical Evidence from U.S. Firm-Level Panel Data

尽管在过去的20年里，许多受人尊敬的学者做出了不懈的努力，但知识产权（IPR）的国际影响在国际经济学中仍然是一个研究不足的领域。拟议的研究将采用一种新的方法来分析不断变化的知识产权制度对创新和国际技术转让的影响。在过去二十年中，许多国家对其知识产权制度进行了广泛的单边改革，往往是为了应对美国或其他主要贸易伙伴的外交压力。通过采用经济分析局（Bureau of Economic Analysis）对美国跨国企业活动的调查数据，本研究将能够考察个别跨国企业对近期一系列有充分记录的知识产权制度变化的反应。对出口、投资、联营销售，尤其是国外技术转让的企业层面数据的使用，为作者提供了一些变化的维度，在这些维度中我们可以探索这些问题。原则上，我们可以观察到同一家公司对不同国家的各种知识产权改革的反应，从而更好地衡量国家特征和专利改革的特定方面对利益变量的不同影响。这些丰富的数据将使这项研究避免许多困扰以往研究的问题。这种改进的经验方法有可能加深对知识产权对公司一级决策的影响的理解，并进一步为当前关于如何执行最近极具争议的知识产权国际条约的政策辩论提供信息。这些条约中最重要的是20世纪90年代缔结的《与贸易有关的知识产权协定》（TRIPs），该协定要求大量发展中国家加强其专利和其他知识产权制度。虽然一些签署国还有几年的时间来完全遵守TRIPs的条款，但发展中国家和发达国家之间已经就TRIPs的影响产生了尖锐的分歧。许多发展中国家的政策制定者认为，《与贸易有关的知识产权协定》所要求的政策变化将不利于他们的国家经济利益，将租金转移给总部设在世界上最发达国家（尤其是美国）的跨国公司专利持有人。主张加强知识产权保护的人反驳说，加强发展中国家的知识产权保护将在发展中国家和发达国家引发更多的创新，促进更快速的经济增长。这些倡导者还认为，加强知识产权将加速发达国家向发展中国家的技术转让，确保这一政策变化带来的收益得到相对平等的分配。与这场辩论一样重要的是，对立双方的相互竞争的主张没有充分的实证研究基础。通过审查跨国公司对早于《与贸易有关的知识产权协定》的国际知识产权协定的反应，本研究将为指导正在进行的国际政策辩论提供宝贵的证据。

Despite the dedicated efforts of many respected scholars over the last 20 years, the international impact of intellectual property rights (IPR) remains an understudied area within international economics. The proposed study will take a novel approach to the analysis of the impact of changing IPR regimes on innovation and international technology transfer. Over the past two decades, a number of countries undertook extensive unilateral reform of their IPR systems, often in response to diplomatic pressure from the United States or other major trading partners. By employing data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis's survey of U.S. multinational activity, this study will be able to examine the responses of individual multinational enterprises to a series of these reasonably well-documented recent IPR regime changes. The use of firm-level data on exports, investment, affiliate sales, and, especially, technology transfer abroad provides the authors with a number of dimensions of variation within which we can explore these issues. In principle, one can observe the same firm responding to various kinds of IPR reform in different countries, allowing for much better measurement the differential impact of national characteristics and particular aspects of patent reform on the variables of interest. This wealth of data will allow this study to avoid many of the problems that have plagued previous efforts. This improved empirical approach has the potential to deepen understanding of the effects of IPR on firm-level decisions and further inform the current policy debate over the manner in which recent and highly controversial international treaties on intellectual property rights should be implemented. The most significant of these treaties, The TRIPs (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Agreement, concluded in the 1990s, requires a large number of developing countries to strengthen their patent and other intellectual property rights (IPR) systems. While some signatory states still have several years to fully comply with the terms of TRIPs, there is already sharp disagreement between developing and developed nations concerning the impact of TRIPs. Many policymakers in developing nations believe that the policy changes mandated by TRIPs will work against their national economic interests, transferring rents to multinational corporate patentholders headquartered in the world's most advanced countries, especially the United States. Advocates for strong IPR counter that strengthening IPR in developing countries will induce more innovation, both in the developing world and in the developed world, fostering more rapid economic growth. These advocates also believe that a strengthening of IPR will accelerate the transfer of technology from the developed world to the developing world, ensuring a relatively equal distribution of gains from this policy change. As important as this debate is, the competing claims of the opposing sides have been insufficiently grounded in empirical research. By examining the response of multinational firms to international IPR agreements that predated TRIPs, this study will provide invaluable evidence to guide the ongoing international policy debate.