Research On The Strategies Of Technology Innovation And Licensing For Firms In Imperfect Competition Market

With the rapid development of economy,scientific and technological advance has been changing with each passing day.Technological progress is a fundamental motivation for a country's economic development and industrial structure adjustment,and thus plays a vital role in social development.Technology innovation,as a hallmark of technological progress,is the basis for promoting the stable development of a country or a nation,and also an important factor for promoting social progress.Therefore,enterprises in each countries are constantly investing a lot of time,money and energy to carry out technology innovation,in order to maintain their leading position in the market.Besides their own innovation,enterprises are more concerned about how to transfer the new technology to other enterprises after innovation,and technology licensing has always been regarded as an important measure for enterprises to diffuse and commercialize the innovative achievements after technological innovation.Therefore,how to create,possess and utilize technology licensing has always been a hot issue in the theoretical research of industrial organization.The core contents of the research on technology innovation and technology licensing research are to analyse the licensor and the licensee's choices and behaviors of licensing strategy from a multitude of perspectives,and further evaluate the impact of optimal technology licensing strategies on the bilateral profits,consumer welfare and social welfare.By assuming different economic backgrounds and considering various key factors that have important impact on technology innovation and licensing,this paper constructs a game model of technology innovation and licensing for enterprises in an incomplete competitive market,in order to explore how enterprises engaging in technology innovations and how much they should invest in the whole process of R&D innovations under different backgrounds.Furthermore,the paper also investigates what kind of technology licensing contracts the enterprises will adopt to transfer the new technologies to other firms or institutes.Based on this,the paper continues to analyzes the possible impacts of these enterprises' behaviors on consumers and the society as a whole.Specifically,the main research contents and achievements of this paper include the following aspects:(1)The research on a firm's optimal strategies of R&D and patent protection under technology licensing.By developing a differentiated Cournot duopoly model,the paper aims to investigate the impact of patent protection on a firm's R&D investment in the presence of two-part tariff licensing.It is assumed that only one firm undertakes a cost-reducing innovation and may license it to the rival firm via a two-part tariff contract.However,the innovator cannot fully enjoy the returns of R&D investment due to the existence of technology spillover.The paper first studies what degree of patent protection the innovator should take to alleviate this problem in the presence and in the absence of licensing.Then,by comparing the optimal R&D investments under these two cases,the paper continues to examine that whether the innovator has an incentive to license the innovation to the rival.At last,the paper examines the impact of the innovative firm's strategy of R&D and patent protection on social welfare.(2)The research on a private firm's optimal licensing strategies when facing uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillovers.By formulating a differentiated Bertrand model,the paper investigates whether and how an innovative firm licenses the new technology when facing uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillover.The uncertainty setting is chosen to make the licensing schemes closer to the real world,while most literature focusing on technology licensing in price competition fails to consider this aspect.Following a three-stage game that consists of an R&D stage,a licensing stage and a price competition stage,the paper first studies the case where licensing occurs by means of either fixed-fee or royalty,and analyzes the optimal choice for the innovative firm between these two licensing methods by comparing their total expected profits.Then,still using the same model framework,the paper considers a more general licensing method,two-part tariff licensing,and compares it with the first two licensing methods to determine the optimal licensing strategy for the innovative firm.(3)The research on a mixed ownership firm's optimal licensing strategies when facing uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillovers.By developing a mixed Cournot duopoly model,the paper investigates whether and how a mixed ownership firm licenses its non-drastic innovation to the private rival when facing uncertain R&D outcomes and technology spillover.Differently from the literature of fully private duopoly in which the two firms are all viewed as profit-maximizing firms,the paper assumes that the mixed ownership firm maximizes the weighted average of its own profit and social welfare,and the weight is affected by its public ownership share.Following a three-stage game that consists of an R&D stage,a licensing stage and an output competition stage,the paper first studies the case where the mixed firm licenses the innovation by means of either the fixed-fee or the royalty,and analyzes the optimal choice for the innovative firm between these two licensing methods by comparing their total expected profits.Then,still using the same model framework,the paper considers the two-part tariff licensing,and compares it with the first two licensing methods so as to determine the optimal licensing strategy for the mixed ownership firm.(4)The research on the leader foreign firm's licensing strategy and the tariff policy for the domestic government under an international duopolistic trade model.By formulating an international trade model,this paper investigates a leader foreign firm's two-part tariff licensing strategy and also the optimal tariff policy for the domestic government.It is assumed that the foreign firm which acts as a Stackelberg leader in the domestic market possesses a cost-reducing technology and whenever profitable,it will license the superior technology to the follower domestic firm by a two-part tariff contract.In the case that the domestic government imposes tariffs on imported products,the paper first discusses the optimal two-part tariff licensing contract for the leader foreign firm.Since the domestic government can manipulate the import tariff rate to influence the licensing strategy of leader foreign firm to achieve its different objectives,the paper then analyses the optimal import tariff policy adopted by leader foreign firm when it intends to maximize either consumers' welfare or the overall social welfare,and further discusses whether and why there exists a conflict between these two objectives regarding the optimal choice of a tariff rate.This paper considers different monopoly competition game models in imperfect competitive market,and different key factors that can influence technological innovation and technology licensing,and then investigates the technology innovation and technology licensing strategy of enterprises from the aspects of enterprise self-interest,consumer welfare and social welfare.The results show that the game model of technological innovation licensing constructed in this paper has certain advantages over other existing models in terms of enterprise position,market competition and strategy selection.Relevant research results can provide new ideas for enterprises and relevant market policymakers,and hopefully can be used to solve the problems of poor decision-making of technological innovation licensing and the failure of optimal allocation of market resources.Therefore,it is beneficial for enterprises to improve their competitiveness and thus seize the dominant position in the market.