Empirical Research On International Spillover Effects Of Different Spillover Channels

The New Growth Theory regards knowledge as the engine of a nation’s economicgrowth. A country will benefit not only from its own knowledge accumulation but alsofrom other countries’ economic growth because knowledge is non-private and canspread out. The following New Trade Theory views trade as the main channel forknowledge spillover. Coe and Helpman (1995) did pioneering work on examining theimpact of knowledge spillover. With further investigation, some researchers discussedthe influence of other channels of knowledge spillovers such as foreign investmentand disembodied knowledge spillovers. Scholars have confirmed their impacts ontechnology in theory. But there is still an argument on the empirical study. By far,there have been a lot of empirical studies on the spillover effects of trade and FDIwhile much fewer on disembodied channel of knowledge spillover. Domestically,there has been still no study on the three spillover channels as a whole.Based on the research review, this paper is trying to analyze these threeinternational knowledge spillover channels within a unified framework. We give anoverall description on the theory analysis and spillover effects of trade, FDI andinternational communication and cooperation. With theory analysis, we extend theeconometric CH model to a more comprehensive model including three spilloverchannels. The sample of this paper stretches from1981to2010. With dynamicordinary least square (DOLS) instrument, we choose40countries and divide theminto5major groups according to their development stage. In order to investigate theinfluence of knowledge spillover on domestic technology level, we focus on not onlytotal factor productivity (TFP), but also technology efficiency and technology change.We want to specify what kind of influence the different spillover channels will haveon different type of technology in different type of countries.With deep research, we find that, the developed countries which include G7andother OECD countries are most dependent on its own domestic R&D capital andhuman capital. To the newly developed countries and areas in Asia which is knownwell as Asian Four Tigers, the domestic R&D and human capital are important as wellas the foreign R&D capital which is acquired from trade and FDI while the spillovereffect of international communication and cooperation is insignificant. The other fourAsian countries-Indonesia, Phillipines, Thailand and Malaysia, and the Bricks have similar results. The domestic R&D capital and human capital do not have significanteffects on their technology levels while the foreign R&D capital has two aspects: onone hand, foreign R&D capital improves technology; on the other hand, it impedestechnology efficiency.The conclusion from this paper somewhat complies with the fact and can givesome insight on the policy makers to improve the technology and productivity.