An Empirical Research On Relations Between International Imports, FDI, Foreign Patent Applications And Technological Innovation

In an increasingly open world economy, a country's technological innovation is not only influenced by domestic factors, but also by international factors. Such effects are relatively clear in less developed countries which are weak in technological innovation. By introducing and absorbing advanced foreign technologies through international imports, foreign direct investment, foreign patent applications and other ways, a country could increase the level of its technological stock quickly, and make use of "overflow" technology for its technology progress, hence improve its own technological innovation ability. Since the 1960s, many scholars at home and abroad have done a large number of theoretical and empirical researches on relations between international trade, foreign direct investment and technological innovation. Gradually from the late 1990s, some scholars began to do research on relations between foreign patent applications and technological progress.This paper mainly studied relations among international imports, foreign direct investment, foreign patent applications and China's overall technological innovation and also regional technical innovation output. Based on generalized C-D production function, the paper built an empirical model of international imports, foreign direct investment, foreign patent applications and China's innovation output, as well as an improved model by adding the level of human capital. Refering to Litchtenberg and Pottelsberghe's mothod of dealing with the stock of foreign R&D capital, the paper did an empirical test through the model mentioned above, then further studied the relations by adding the level of human capital.The paper concluded that during 1990-2007, there exists a long-run equilibrium relationship between the international imports, foreign direct investment, foreign patent applications in China and China's invention patent applications; domestic R&D investment continues to be a core driving force for our regional innovation capacity and plays a leading role in our technological progress; different foreign capital stocks have different effects toward different regions; after adding the level of human capital, we find that the contributions to domesic R&D investment decreases, also have different effects in different regions on technological innovation. At last, the paper made a Summary, put forward some relevant policy recommendations, and proposed the study prospects.