Collaborative Research: The Private and Social Returns to R&D in the Age of Offshoring

随着企业的供应链变得高度复杂和地理上的分散，它鼓励了以前在美国境内进行的制造活动的离岸。最近离岸外包的激增对创新速度有什么影响？有几个理由可以预期离岸外包可能会对其产生负面影响。如果正式的研发努力和通过使用技术产生的非正式知识在创新中是互补的，那么研发和生产的地理分离将减缓创新。此外，如果知识在物理上接近的工厂之间溢出，一家公司的生产地点和研发决策将影响其他公司的创新速度。智力价值：为了评估这些影响的程度，本项目使用了过去15年在制造业普查和制造业年度调查中收集的微观数据，以检查企业对中国导致的离岸外包成本降低的反应。中国加入世界贸易组织（WTO）。首先，通过对比纯粹的美国国内公司和那些在中国加入世界贸易组织后决定离岸的公司的创新轨迹，量化了美国离岸外包对公司研发回报的影响。其次，分析了离岸外包对美国社会创新回报的影响。地理限制了劳动力、商品和知识的流动，这一事实往往导致生产在特定地点聚集。因此，如果一家公司突然从美国工厂撤出生产，可能会影响到其他美国公司；当这些公司做出反应时，其影响可能会被放大到整个经济的比例。通过超越离岸外包的狭隘的私人影响，这项工作得到了“离岸外包乘数”，它抓住了离岸外包对美国生产力和创新的总体影响。更广泛的影响：这项研究通过直接衡量离岸外包对私人研发回报的影响，为离岸外包削弱了美国创新的说法提供了确凿的数据。研究结果对制造业和贸易政策的形成至关重要。特别是，如果离岸外包对研发的社会回报的影响很大，正如许多人所声称的那样，这表明需要协调对研发的激励与对本地生产而不是外国生产的激励，以最大限度地提高知识溢出的反馈效应。该项目还将通过培训研究生研究助理来促进科学劳动力的发展，这些助理将获得未充分利用的数据源和技术的第一手知识，并将帮助支持在宾夕法尼亚州州立大学和科罗拉多州博尔德新建的人口普查研究数据中心。

As firms' supply chains have become highly complex and geographically fragmented it has encouraged the offshoring of manufacturing activities previously carried out within the United States. What are the implications of the recent surge in offshoring for the rate to innovation? There are several reasons to expect that offshoring might affect it negatively. If formal Research & Development (R&D) efforts and informal knowledge generated through the use of technology are complements in innovation, the geographic separation of R&D and production will slow down innovation. Moreover, if knowledge spills over between physically proximate plants, one firm's production location and R&D decisions will affect the rate of innovation of other firms. Intellectual Merit:To assess the magnitude of these effects, this project uses microdata from the last 15 years collected in the Census of Manufactures and the Annual Survey of Manufacturing to examine firm responses to the reduction in costs of offshoring caused by China?s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). First, the impact of U.S. offshoring on firms' returns on R&D is quantified by contrasting the innovation trajectories of purely domestic U.S. firms with those that decided to offshore after China's entry into the World Trade Organization. Second, the effect of offshoring on the social return to innovation in the United States is analyzed. Geography constrains the movement of labor, goods, and knowledge, a fact that often leads to the clustering of production at particular locations. As a consequence, if one firm suddenly withdraws production from U.S. factories it could affect other U.S. firms; as these firms respond the effects may be magnified to economy-wide proportions. By going beyond the narrow private effects of offshoring, this work gets at the "offshoring multiplier", which captures the total impact on U.S. productivity and innovation caused by offshoring. Broader Impact: This research puts hard numbers to the claim that offshoring has weakened U.S. innovation by measuring directly the impact of offshoring on the private return to R&D. The results are essential for the formation of manufacturing and trade policies. In particular, if the impact of offshoring on the social returns to R&D is large, as many have claimed, it suggests the need to coordinate the incentives for R&D with incentives for local over foreign production in order to maximize the feedback effects from knowledge spillovers. The project will also contribute to scientific workforce development through the training of graduate research assistants who will gain first hand knowledge of underutilized data sources and techniques and will help to support newly established Census Research Data Centers in State College, PA, and Boulder, CO.