Dear Colleagues,
The next Entrepreneurship and Innovation Policy Research virtual seminar is Thursday, January 11, from 11:00-12:00 ET. Yanbo Wang (University of Hong Kong) - will present "The Contribution of Chinese Science to US Technological Advancement: Evidence from Patent Citation of Academic Papers" (with Junhan Wang and Xibao Li) . Click HERE to register for the 1/11 seminar (abstract is below). We hope you join us.
Please visit this LINK to view and register for upcoming Spring 2024 seminars.
- Tim Folta (UCONN), Maryann Feldman (ASU), and Supradeep Dutta (Rutgers U)
Abstract: Science has played a crucial role in propelling technological advancements, and firms are increasingly relying on academia for new ideas or knowledge. Although the US has been the epicenter of global science, a significant trend has emerged: the internationalization of scientific knowledge generation. This trend is evident in both the increase in cross-border collaborations among scientists and the growing contributions from researchers located outside North America towards the scientific knowledge frontier advancement. There is limited understanding of the extent to which Chinese science has contributed to technological advancement in the West. Neither do we know which individuals and organizations in the US are more likely to draw upon Chinese science for innovation inspiration and how the recent geopolitical tensions between the two nations have affected the process of knowledge spillover from Chinese science to US innovation and vice versa.
Our analyses reveal that scientific knowledge originating from China has experienced a growing influence on US patents. Between 2000 and 2020, one in four US science-reliant patents cited publications authors by scholars from China. By 2020, China surpassed all other foreign nations regarding the number of US patents citing its scientific publications. Furthermore, we find that China science-citing US patents are not of lower quality (as measured by forward citations) than other foreign science-citing US patents. On the contrary, these patents exhibit higher levels of novelty than US patents that cite non-China scientific publications (US-based publications included). This likely reflects the unique position of China as the only major non-OECD country whose scientific knowledge is extensively utilized by US innovators. In addition, we find that co-ethnicity ties and the invisible college, i.e. informal communication networks among academic scientists, facilitate knowledge spillovers from Chinese science to US patents. However, multinational corporations, especially those with operations in both China and the US, serve as the most important channel for knowledge spillovers.