Essays on Dynamics of Exports, Innovation and Productivity

Essays on Dynamics of Exports, Innovation and Productivity PDF Author: Ruohan Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Abstract: My dissertation discusses the dynamics of firms' exports, innovation and productivity growth in an open economy. More specifically, my empirical research finds that both exporting and innovation are important channels for industries and individual firms to promote their productivity. I then build a theoretical model that shows how heterogeneous firms determine their choices of innovation and exports, and how these choices affect their growth and consequently the aggregate economy.

Essays on Dynamics of Exports, Innovation and Productivity

Essays on Dynamics of Exports, Innovation and Productivity PDF Author: Ruohan Wu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Abstract: My dissertation discusses the dynamics of firms' exports, innovation and productivity growth in an open economy. More specifically, my empirical research finds that both exporting and innovation are important channels for industries and individual firms to promote their productivity. I then build a theoretical model that shows how heterogeneous firms determine their choices of innovation and exports, and how these choices affect their growth and consequently the aggregate economy.

Essays in Trade, Innovation, and Productivity

Essays in Trade, Innovation, and Productivity PDF Author: Kaiji Gong
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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This dissertation explores the determinants of firms' productivity growth and innovation activities. The first chapter studies the local technology spillover effects originated from multinational firms' innovation activities. The second chapter discusses the impact of import competition from China on U.S. firms' innovation activities. The third chapter introduces a new measure of firm-level regulation, and examines the consequences of rising regulation intensity in the U.S. on firms' production choices. Chapter 1 identifies the causal impact of U.S. multinationals' technology advances on their subsidiaries and the nearby domestic firms' productivity in China. By combining firm-level panel data from both the U.S. and China, I match U.S. multinationals with their manufacturing subsidiaries in China and measure the multinationals' technology stocks based on their patenting activities. To address potential endogeneity concerns, I introduce an instrumental variable strategy based on the U.S. state level R& D tax credit policies. I find multinationals' technology improvements induce increase in the output and total factor productivity (TFP) of both their subsidiaries and domestic firms in local areas. The magnitude of technology spillovers hinges on local firms' absorptive capacities, and their technological connections to the multinationals. Chapter 2 (co-authored with Rui Xu) analyzes the impact of rising import competition from China on U.S. innovative activities. Using Compustat data, we find that import competition induces R& D expenditures to be reallocated towards more productive and more profitable firms within each industry. Such reallocation effect has the potential to offset the average drop in firm-level R& D identified in the previous literature. Indeed, our quantitative analysis shows no adverse impact of import competition on aggregate R& D expenditures. Taking the analysis beyond manufacturing, we find that import competition has led to reallocation of researchers towards booming service industries, including business and repairs, personal, and financial services. Chapter 3 (co-authored with Constantine Yannelis) introduces a new measure of firm-level regulation. We find that more regulation increases labor and capital inputs. Productivity decreases, which is consistent with a model of regulation inducing non-productive investment. We employ two empirical strategies to identify the causal impact of regulation on firms, first, utilizing structural breaks and industry level regulation changes, and second, computing predicted industry level regulation measures as instruments. We conduct an event study using the surprise 2016 US election results. Firms with higher Dodd-Frank exposure exhibited higher returns following an increase in the probability of repeal.

Essays on International Macroeconomics, Productivity Growth, and Firm Dynamics

Essays on International Macroeconomics, Productivity Growth, and Firm Dynamics PDF Author: Xiaomei Sui
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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"This dissertation consists of essays studying how macroeconomic outcomes, particularly aggregate productivity growth, are affected by the change in market environment or market frictions in the presence of heterogeneous firms from an international perspective. Each chapter employs both empirical and quantitative macroeconomic methods. The first chapter studies how globalization contributes to uneven firm growth and its implications for industrial concentration and productivity growth in OECD countries. I document new facts showing that industry leaders grow faster in sales and patenting than followers, particularly in industries with increasing export intensities; sales divergence is mainly driven by exports rather than domestic sales. To rationalize these facts, I develop a two-country endogenous growth model with strategic domestic and international competition and an 'innovation disadvantage of backwardness' that captures how firms innovate less when left behind. Globalization, modelled as decreasing trade iceberg costs and increasing international knowledge spillovers, triggers a stronger innovation response among leaders than followers via the market size effect, inducing an increase in domestic concentration that depresses firm innovation via weaker domestic competition: followers and leaders reduce innovation due to the innovation dis-advantage of backwardness and decreasing returns to innovation, respectively. The globalization-induced harsher foreign competition also reduces innovation via lower profits. In the calibrated model, globalization explains 80% of the rise in industrial concentration and 50% of the productivity growth slowdown in the data, mainly due to weaker domestic competition. The increasing international knowledge spillover force of globalization dominates. The second chapter studies how the less-developed financial market in Southern European countries contributes to their slower aggregate productivity growth than developed European countries since the information and communications technology revolution. I document that Southern European firms have lower productivity growth, lower intangible capital growth, and lower leverage than developed European firms. The disparity is larger among smaller firms. To rationalize these findings, I build a model featuring endogenous firm productivity growth through innovation investment and size-dependent financial frictions. Financial frictions lower productivity growth via two channels: innovation investment and misallocation. The model finds that financial frictions account for at least 11% of the aggregate productivity growth difference in the data, mainly via the innovation investment channel. The model also highlights that fast capital and output growth may coexist with slow productivity growth due to firms' tradeoffs in allocating a constrained amount of investment between capital and productivity."--Pages viii-ix.

Essays on Firm-level Dynamics of Innovation

Essays on Firm-level Dynamics of Innovation PDF Author: Hyuk Chung
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Research
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Three Essays on International Trade and Productivity

Three Essays on International Trade and Productivity PDF Author: Siwook Lee
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Essays on International Productivity Growth and Technological Diffusion

Essays on International Productivity Growth and Technological Diffusion PDF Author: Maurice David Kugler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Innovation, Organization and Economic Dynamics

Innovation, Organization and Economic Dynamics PDF Author: Giovanni Dosi
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 9781782541851
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 728

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Book Description
Conventional economic analysis of property rights in natural resources is too narrow and restrictive to allow for effective comparisons between alternative institutional structures. In this book, a conceptual framework is developed for the analysis of the

Essays on Innovation and Productivity

Essays on Innovation and Productivity PDF Author: Zhiyuan Chen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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My studies focus on the determinants and aggregate implications of innovation and productivity. This dissertation includes three chapters. Chapter 1 in on the role of R&D investment in determining the relationship between finance and total factor productivity (TFP). Chapter 2 is on the quantification of the costs and benefits of R&D and patent. The last Chapter provides an analysis of the driving forces behind the patent growth in China. Firms in developing countries are less innovative than that are in developed economies. A large body of literature has documented that the lack of financial support has hindered firms from participating in R&D investment. How much does the R\&D channel account for the productivity loss caused by financial constraints? How does R&D investment affect the efficacy of self-financing in the reduction of TFP losses? In Chapter 1, I attempt to shed light on each of these questions by using a quantitative model of R&D investment with financial frictions. In the model, R&D investment, which affects productivity evolution endogenously, is subject to financial constraints. I parameterize the model with production, innovation, and balance sheet data from manufacturing firms in China, a country with relatively less developed financial markets. Through the lens of the model, I first quantify static and dynamic TFP losses. I then analyze the transition dynamics and the steady state of the model. Finally, to gauge the importance of R&D investment for understanding the relationship between finance and TFP, I compare the results of the estimated model with a model's special case in which the productivity process is exogenous. The estimated model implies sizeable static TFP losses caused by capital misallocation and dynamic TFP losses from distorting R&D investment. The accumulation of internal funds reduces the static TFP loss gradually. In contrast, because R&D has a persistent effect on productivity, the dynamic TFP loss rises initially and declines later. Compared to a model with exogenous productivity, innovation investment makes firms less able to use self-financing to reduce TFP losses and prolongs the transition. Endogenous productivity growth amplifies the gains in TFP and output from financial reform and leads to a longer-lasting consequence from a credit crunch. Improving the pledge-ability of intangible assets in China to be the US level reduces the static TFP loss only 0.4%, but the dynamic TFP loss by 7.1%. I explore several policy implications of the quantitative model. First, I consider a financial reform that relaxes the credit constraints permanently. I find that the boosting effects of financial reform on aggregate TFP and output are amplified when considering the endogenous response of R\&D investment. Second, I study a credit crunch by tightening the financial constraints for one period. I show that the detrimental impact of a credit crunch on aggregate TFP and output tends to be longer-lasting when I account for the endogenous growth of productivity. Different firms undertake different levels of R&D investment. Quantifying the costs and benefits of innovation activities is essential to the understanding of firms' incentives to innovate. Innovation is a process of producing new knowledge of new products or new processes. In the process, R&D in the input while patenting is part of the output. What are the benefits of R&D from patenting and non-patenting activities? In Chapter 2, I embed patents into the productivity evolution of a standard dynamic model of endogenous productivity change. I treat R&D as the fundamental source of endogenous productivity growth, but the marginal effect of R&D investment is affected by patenting activities. I propose a method to decompose the returns to R&D into patenting and non-patenting outcomes. The methodology also provides an evaluation of the patent value. I apply the model to a sample of Chinese high-tech manufacturing firms. The estimated model shows: first, on average R&D investment causes around 0.45% increase (or around 0.24 million USD) in the firm value. Second, a decomposition of the return to R&D shows that non-patenting innovation accounts for a majority (around 77%) of the total return to R&D. Third, the average expected value of an invention (a utility) patent is around 0.39 (0.34) million USD when measured by the increase in firm value. Lastly, the start-up costs of R&D is over ten times larger than maintenance costs. This reflects that starting a new innovation project requires a larger amount of investment than maintaining an ongoing research project. The distribution of R&D costs differs across industries. I also perform a series of counterfactual exercises to evaluate the effectiveness of different types of R&D subsidy policies that reduce the costs of R&D investment. Some interesting results are found. First, a lump-sum subsidy is universally more effective than a marginal subsidy either in increasing the firm value or promoting innovation participation. Second, for both types of subsidy programs, reductions in the maintenance costs cause a greater increase in the firm value. But subsidizing the start-up (maintenance) costs promotes innovation participation more under lump-sum (proportional) subsidy. Third, a lump-sum subsidy is more efficient than a proportional subsidy. In the experiment of a 20% decrease in maintenance costs for R&D, the average efficiency of lump-sum subsidy is around 12 times greater than the marginal subsidy in increasing firm value and is about twice greater in promoting the firm's innovation participation. The difference is more striking when I consider the subsidy for start-up costs of R&D. In the past three decades, China has experienced an explosive increase in both patent applications and patent granting. Breaking the patent counts into invention patents, utility models, and designs, this extraordinary growth prevails. If different types of patents represent distinct forms of innovation, patent heterogeneity should be important for understanding the driving forces behind China's patent surge as well as its policy implications. In Chapter 3, we study China's patent surge and its driving forces using a novel and comprehensive merged dataset on patent applications filed by Chinese firms. We find that R&D investment, FDI (Foreign Direct Investment), and patent subsidy have different effects on different types of patents. First, R&D investment has a positive and significant impact on patenting activities for all types of patents under different model specifications. Second, the stimulating effect of foreign direct investment on patent applications is only robust for utility model patents and design patents. Third, the patent subsidy only has a positive impact on design patents. The results imply that FDI and patent subsidy may disproportionately spur low-quality patents.

Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran

Essays in Honor of M. Hashem Pesaran PDF Author: Alexander Chudik
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 180262063X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
The collection of chapters in Volume 43 Part A of Advances in Econometrics serves as a tribute to one of the most innovative, influential, and productive econometricians of his generation, Professor M. Hashem Pesaran.

Three Essays on Innovation Dynamics

Three Essays on Innovation Dynamics PDF Author: Subhadeep Datta
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This dissertation contains three essays on the theme of industry-level innovation and different aspects of innovation. The essays contribute to the literatures of institutional theory, categories, commercialization, evaluation, responsible innovation, and governance of innovation. Over the past few decades, the world has observed a wave of commercialization which has changed the way many actions are performed. One of the key features has been that of the state relinquishing its control over many activities that are now performed in the market. This wave of commercialization has given rise to some unique and innovative forms of organization within existing industries. Some of the outcomes of these innovative forms of organizations are the emergence of new categories, hybridization of existing categories, tensions between various stakeholders because of the hybridizations, emergence of new performance evaluation systems, and new questions being raised on ethical and moral grounds concerning the application of such innovations. In this dissertation I have attempted to address some of these aforementioned aspects of industry-level innovation.