Cross-border R&D Cooperation,local Technological Advantages And Quality Of Innovation Activities

In the 21^stcentury,with the in-depth development of economic and technological globalization,the global flow of innovative resources and cross-border R&D cooperation have become increasingly popular.As China’s economy is transitioning to high-quality and innovation-oriented development,the allocation of talents and other innovative resources is of great practical significance during the process.With long-term and unremitting efforts,China has gradually become embedded in the global innovation network in recent years.Along with this process,China has also made certain achievements in introducing overseas inventors.According to the European Patent Office,the number of Chinese applicants’cross-border cooperation patents rose from less than 50 in 1980 to over 1,000 in 2018,accounting for 10.64%of the total patents applied by China during certain year.So here comes to the question,can the introduction of overseas innovative talents improve the quality of China’s innovation activities?To answer the question,this article uses Chinese patent data during 2001 to 2018 from European Patent Office to examine the impact of cross-border cooperation on innovation quality and its heterogeneity.The results show that:In general,cross-border R&D cooperation can indeed improve the quality of innovation activities,whether it is the technical breadth of patents,number of patent families,citations or patent renewal.Furthermore,research shows that cross-border R&D cooperation has a heterogeneous effect on the improvement of innovation quality for patents in different technological fields.From a global perspective,the effect of cross-border cooperation on improving quality for patents with revealed technological advantages is weaker than that without such advantages.And it is the same in domestic market,the effect of cross-border R&D cooperation on improving quality for patents with relative advantages is also smaller than that without relative advantages.This shows that there is a certain degree of so called“latecomer advantage”for China’s relatively backward technology field.In the future,government may explore more cross-border R&D cooperation methods to improve the overall innovation quality of China.Meanwhile,domestic firms should focus on their own research and development bases so as to better match and coop with their overseas’partners.