Economic Analysis of IT innovation : International Comparison of Japan, US, China and Korea

本研究包含两个部分：（1）企业层面的资讯科技与生产力分析;（2）资讯科技产业的创新。关于第一部分，对日本和美国的企业进行了IT网络利用和生产率的企业层面分析。两国的企业都受到了积极的影响，而美国企业的生产率影响程度更大。这可能是由于IT投资战略的差异，即，美国企业将IT作为提高企业竞争力的战略工具，而日本企业在企业管理过程中对IT系统的利用不足。此外，还对中国企业进行了按企业所有制类型划分的IT和生产率分析。研究发现，信息技术对国有企业改制为股份制企业的生产率影响更大。企业所有权的这种变化会激发生产率增长的动力，这些企业应该密集地使用IT作为提高企业绩效的工具。最后，我们发现在韩国很难获得公司层面的数据。因此，我们按行业对IT股进行了分析。至于该项目的第二部分，即，在分析IT产业创新的基础上，利用专利数据库，重点研究了中国企业对日本和韩国企业的技术追赶情况。中国电子企业的整体技术能力仍然较低。然而，在通信设备行业，我们发现中国企业已经以惊人的速度赶上了日本企业。

This project consists of two parts, (1) firm level analysis of IT and productivity and (2) innovation of IT industry. As for the first part, the firm level analysis of IT network use and productivity has been conducted for Japanese and US firms. Positive impacts can be found in firms in both countries, while the degree of productivity impact is larger for US firms. This may be the result of differences in IT investment strategy, i.e., US companies uses IT as a strategic tool for firm's competitiveness, while Japanese firms underutilize IT system in their corporate management process. In addition, an analysis of IT and productivity by type of firm ownership has been conducted for Chinese firms. It is found that productivity impact of IT is larger for the firms converted from state owned company to stock holding one. Such changes in firm ownership induce motivation for productivity growth, and these firms are supposed to use IT intensively as a tool for better firm performance. Finally, we have found the difficulty to access to firm level data in Korea. Therefore, we have conducted the analysis of IT stocks by industry. As for the second part of this project, i.e., innovation of IT industry, we put our focus on technology catching up of Chinese firms to those in Japan and Korea, by using patent database. An overall technological capability of Chinese electronics firms is still low. However, in communications equipment industry ; we have found that Chinese companies have caught up with Japanese firms at an astonishing speed.