This paper studies the role of trade, both domestically as well as internationally, as a channel of technology transmission. A model is presented in which R&D investments towards product innovations trigger total factor productivity growth at the industry level. If the new products are exported to other industries, the return to the R&D investments does in part spill over to these industries. The model predicts that total factor productivity levels are positively related to both own-, and the domestic and foreign industry R&D investments of the trade partners. Using data on trade relations between OECD country sectors, effective R&D stocks are constructed which should pick up technology flows that are trade-related. The empirical results, which are comparative to a benchmark model where trade relations play no role, find generally only weak support for the notion that the transmission of technology is trade-related; more specifically, they point more towards domestic than to international trade. At the same time, the results suggest that the adopted approach might not be powerful enough to identify trade-related technology flows, which has implications for other areas of research which have used analogous approaches before.
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Find related papers by JEL classification: O3 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Technological Change O4 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Zvi Griliches, 1998.
"The Search for R&D Spillovers,"
NBER Chapters,
in: R&D and Productivity: The Econometric Evidence, pages 251-268
National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!]
Coe, David T & Helpman, Elhanan & Hoffmaister, Alexander, 1995.
"North-South R&D Spillovers,"
CEPR Discussion Papers
1133, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
David T. Coe & Elhanan Helpman & Alexander Hoffmaister, 1995.
"North-South R&D Spillovers,"
NBER Working Papers
5048, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.