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

由于公司的供应链变得高度复杂和地理上支离破碎，这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的速度有什么影响？有几个理由可以预期，离岸业务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是创新的补充，那么研发和生产的地理分离将减缓创新。此外，如果知识在实际邻近的工厂之间溢出，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严重性，该项目使用了过去15年在制造业普查和制造业年度调查中收集的微观数据，以检查对中国？S加入世界贸易组织(WTO)导致的离岸成本降低的坚定反应。首先，通过对比纯美国本土公司和中国加入世界贸易组织后决定离岸的公司的创新轨迹，量化了美国离岸对公司研发回报的影响。其次，分析了离岸外包对美国创新社会回报的影响。地理限制了劳动力、商品和知识的流动，这一事实往往会导致特定地点的生产集聚。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；随着这些公司做出回应，其影响可能被放大到整个经济的比例。通过超越离岸外包的狭义私人效应，这项工作得到了“离岸外包乘数”，该乘数反映了离岸外包对美国生产率和创新的总体影响。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。这一结果对于制造业和贸易政策的形成至关重要。特别是，如果像许多人声称的那样，离岸外包对研发的社会回报的影响很大，这表明有必要将对研发的激励与对本土生产的激励相协调，以最大限度地发挥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队伍的发展，他们将获得未得到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市新建立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.