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

合作研究：R 的私人和社会回报

• 批准号: 1360207
• 负责人: Wolfgang Keller
• 金额: $ 27.7万
• 依托单位: National Bureau of Economic Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-05-01 至 2020-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1360207&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Private; Social; Returns

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.

随着公司的供应链变得高度复杂和地域分散，这鼓励了以前在美国境内进行的制造活动的离岸外包。 最近离岸外包的激增对创新率有什么影响？ 有几个理由可以预期离岸外包可能会产生负面影响。如果正式的研发工作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，如果知识溢出之间的物理接近的工厂，一个公司的生产地点和研发决策将影响其他公司的创新速度。 知识价值：为了评估这些影响的程度，本项目使用过去15年的制造业普查和制造业年度调查中收集的微观数据，研究企业对中国造成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，通过对比纯美国本土企业与中国加入WTO后决定离岸的企业的创新轨迹，量化了美国离岸对企业研发回报的影响。 其次，分析了美国离岸外包对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，这一事实往往导致生产在特定地点的聚集。因此，如果一家公司突然从美国工厂撤出生产，它可能会影响其他美国公司;随着这些公司的反应，影响可能会放大到整个经济的比例。 通过超越离岸外包的狭隘私人影响，这项工作得到了“离岸乘数”，它捕捉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：这项研究通过直接测量离岸外包对研发私人回报的影响，为离岸外包削弱了美国创新的说法提供了确凿的数字&。 其结果对于制定制造业和贸易政策至关重要。 特别是，如果像许多人所声称的那样，离岸外包对研发的社会回报的影响很大，这表明有必要协调对研发的激励措施和对当地生产的激励措施，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劳动力的发展，他们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成立的人口普查研究数据中心。