Imitation or Innovation? The impacts of patents and R&D expenditures on the high-tech exports of Newly Industrialised Countries

Exports have long been shown as being important in driving economic growth and development. The development and export of high-tech products has been shown to play a particularly significant role in this. But how do lesser-developed countries develop such products and thus progress to higher levels of income and economic development – by imitation or innovation? This is a dynamic process that warrants being revisited regularly, given also the mixed empirical results in the extant literature. In this study we focus on the high-tech exports of a panel of eight newly industrialised countries (NICs) over 1996–2016. We make two important contributions to the literature: we focus on the country-level, complementing the considerable literature analysing firm-level effects; and we analyse jointly the relationships between patents, research and development (R&D) expenditure and the export of high-tech goods. Employing panel cointegration and panel Granger causality testing procedures, we reject the imitation hypothesis: NICs are engaging in product innovation with R&D activities leading to patents that provide long-run export benefits. Our results also support the self-selection hypothesis over learning-by-exporting in the dynamics of trade- led economic development. NICs’ research and innovation activity suggests a growing dynamic benefit in terms of export-led-growth via a focus on high-tech exports.