Mergers and Inventors' Productivity in the Pharmaceutical Industry

制药行业的合并和发明人的生产力

• 批准号: ES/S015566/1
• 负责人: Carmine Ornaghi
• 金额: $ 39.83万
• 依托单位: University of Southampton
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FS015566%2F1
• 关键词: Mergers; Inventors; Productivity; Pharmaceutical; Industry

Productivity is a main driver of economic growth and a key indicator of a country's competitiveness. At the launch of the ESRC Productivity Insights Network, Lord Jim O'Neill, chair of the International Advisory Board, said that "raising productivity is arguably the central economic challenge in the UK, but to achieve this we need to better understand the drivers and inhibitors of productivity." Although not all the factors that influence productivity are well understood, there is consensus among economists that innovation is one of its main determinants. Understanding how changes in market structure and in firms' organization affect innovation is then vital to unlock an important piece of the productivity conundrum. One question that has recently gained central stage in the economic debate on innovation is how Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) affect firms' research efforts and output. The view taken by the European Commission in recent merger cases is that M&As involving highly innovative companies in concentrated industries are likely to decrease R&D effort and innovation. However, recent theoretical studies show that M&As may spur or stifle innovation depending on the assumption made about the R&D technology, the synergies arising from the merger and changes in the appropriability of the innovation. The question whether M&As have a positive or a negative impact on innovation is therefore, ultimately, an empirical one. Unfortunately, the available evidence does not seem to be conclusive either. The aim of this project is then to provide fresh evidence on this relevant policy issue. While most of the existing literature has looked at the effect of M&As on innovation using firm-level data, the main novelty of this project is that we will investigate how M&As influence the productivity of individual inventors, using patent data in the Pharmaceutical Industry. The use of data at inventor level presents at least two important advantages compared to firm-level analysis. First, inventor-level data will allow us to identify the causal effect of M&As on innovation in a more rigorous way. In this study, we will compare the productivity of inventors that work for companies that merge to that of an unusually large pool of inventors that work for firms not involved in a merger and have very similar research output up to the year of the merger. Moreover, changes in productivity at inventor level are easier to measure because individuals, differently from firms, do not physically merge into a new entity. Second, inventor-level data will allow us to explore the mechanisms through which M&As affect inventors' productivity and whether they can truly favour knowledge synergies between teams of scientists, as their proponents often claim. One specific objective of this project is to investigate whether inventors' productivity varies systematically with changes in their research team or with the degree of overlapping in their research programs. The choice of the pharma industry to investigate these questions presents also several advantages. First, this is a highly innovative industry, employing more than 70,000 people in UK only. Second, most of the largest pharma companies currently active on the market have been involved in one or more M&As over the last three decades. Third, patents provide an accurate measure of the research output of pharma companies because they are the only effective way to protect innovation in this industry, whereas other sectors can rely on other strategies, such as trade secrecy.By studying how M&As affect scientists' job departure and network of collaborators and, in turn, their innovative output, this research will provide vital evidence to inform on-going debates in competition policy as well as to improve our understanding of "Business Environment" and "People", two of the five pillars identified by the UK government as necessary to increasing productivity.

生产率是经济增长的主要动力，也是衡量一个国家竞争力的关键指标。在ESRC生产力洞察网络的发布会上，国际咨询委员会主席吉姆奥尼尔勋爵说：“提高生产力可以说是英国经济的核心挑战，但要实现这一目标，我们需要更好地了解生产力的驱动因素和抑制因素。“虽然并非所有影响生产率的因素都得到很好的理解，但经济学家一致认为，创新是其主要决定因素之一。了解市场结构和企业组织的变化如何影响创新，对于解开生产率难题的一个重要部分至关重要。最近，在关于创新的经济辩论中，一个成为焦点的问题是，合并和收购（M& A）如何影响企业的研究努力和产出。欧洲委员会在最近的合并案中所持的观点是，涉及集中产业中高度创新的公司的合并和收购可能会减少研发努力和创新。然而，最近的理论研究表明，并购可能会刺激或扼杀创新，这取决于对研发技术的假设，合并产生的协同效应和创新的可占用性的变化。因此，合并和收购对革新是积极影响还是消极影响的问题最终是一个经验问题。不幸的是，现有的证据似乎也不是决定性的。本项目的目的是为这一相关政策问题提供新的证据。虽然现有的文献大多使用企业层面的数据研究了M& A对创新的影响，但本项目的主要新奇在于，我们将使用制药行业的专利数据，研究M& A如何影响个人发明者的生产率。与公司层面的分析相比，在发明人层面使用数据至少有两个重要优势。第一，发明者层面的数据将使我们能够以更严格的方式确定M& A对创新的因果影响。在本研究中，我们将比较为合并公司工作的发明家的生产率，以及为没有参与合并的公司工作的发明家的生产率，这些公司的研究成果在合并当年非常相似。此外，发明者层面的生产率变化更容易衡量，因为个人与企业不同，不会实际合并成一个新的实体。第二，发明人一级的数据将使我们能够探索并购影响发明人生产力的机制，以及并购是否真的能够像其支持者经常声称的那样，促进科学家团队之间的知识协同作用。本课题的具体目的之一是调查发明人的生产率是否随着研究团队的变化或研究项目的重叠程度而系统地变化。选择制药行业来调查这些问题也有几个好处。首先，这是一个高度创新的行业，仅在英国就雇用了7万多人。其次，目前活跃在市场上的大多数大型制药公司在过去30年中都参与了一次或多次并购。第三，专利是衡量制药企业研究成果的一个准确指标，因为专利是保护制药行业创新的唯一有效手段，而其他行业可以依靠其他策略，如商业保密。通过研究并购如何影响科学家的离职和合作者网络，进而影响他们的创新成果，这项研究将提供重要的证据，为正在进行的竞争政策辩论提供信息，并提高我们对“商业环境”和“人”的理解，这是英国政府确定的提高生产力所必需的五大支柱中的两个。