Signaling or Productivity Improving? That is a Question: Evidence from Importing Foreign Technology

Speaker：TAN Yong（Associate Professor, Nanjing University of Finance and Economics）

Host：LI Bing, Associate Professor, Lingnan College

Time and Date：16:00-18:30, Dec. 3, 2021

Venue：WANG Daohan Conference Room 

Language: Chinese

Abstract：

Firm-level R&D could improve firm-level profitability through two main channels: 1. R&D activities lead to innovations which increase firm-level productivity; 2. R&D generates patents which signal firm-level unobservable attributes. In this paper, we first document a series of stylized facts to show (1). foreign-imported patents exhibit signaling effect which shift up firm-level idiosyncratic demand in exporting markets; (2) domestic-oriented R&D are more efficient in improving firm-level productivity. We next establish a structural model in which each domestic firms endogenously choose its R&D regime, optimal R&D investments, pricing and exporting decisions, etc, to rationalize the stylized facts. We then calibrate the key parameters of the structural model and conduct a number of counterfactual analyses. Our counterfactual analyzes indicate that (a). an increase in international trade cost increase firm-level innovation performance; (b). a fall in intra trade cost improves innovation performance but a particular low intra trade cost lowers average TFP; (c). a decrease of signaling effect first lowers domestic firm’s innovation performance and then increases it.