The Effect of Intellectual Property Rights on Intra-firm and Arm's-length Technology Transfer: Evidence from Japanese Firm-level Data(in Japanese)

It is noteworthy that the cross-border technology flow has increased rapidly with progress of globalization in recent years. Although the issue on how intellectual property rights (IPRs) affect the international technology flow is of great interest, the empirical study using micro-data is not sufficient. This paper examines the effects of IPRs on intra-firm and arm's-length technology exports simultaneously. The estimation is based on the data of technology exports to various countries at the firm-level which succeeded in covering 90% of the total. The results indicate that after controlling the characteristics of firm, industry and country, the strong IPRs in a recipient country promotes the arm's-length technology export while the intra-firm one is reduced in average. Further, it is found that the effect of IPRs is different according to variation of firms and industries. There is positive impact of IPRs on intra-firm technology exports in R&D intensive firms. On the other, the sensitivity analysis shows that the effect of IPRs on intra-firm flow is not stable while that on arm's-length flow is robust.