Technological Gap,technological Spillover And Technological Progress

Latecomer advantage refers to the competitive advantage gained by late entrants because they enter the industry later.Later entrants can learn to imitate or avoid errors by observing the behavior of first entrants,thereby reducing the cost of trial and error.Latecomers can obtain technology spillovers from developed countries through trade.Since the reform and openingup,China has actively integrated into the international economic environment,encouraged invention,and achieved rapid development in technology.In this process,we narrowed the technological gap with developed countries.However,developed countries may have a sense of crisis and take measures to curb technological spillovers.It has also led to some problems in the process of technology catch-up,such as the trade war between China and the United States.The United States is the largest developed country in the world,and there is a large amount of trade between two countries.In 2019,Sino-U.S.trade reached 541.223 billion dollars.Trump believes China has achieved a huge trade surplus,and has obtained technological progress from trade,As a result,the US imposed a technical blockade on China.How does the technological gap between China and the US change? Has China gained technology spillovers from the trade?As the technology of China gradually approaches the United States,could we make technological progress through technology spillovers?The research and exploration of these issues is undoubtedly of great significance.Based on the four-digit industry data of China and the United States in 1998-2007,this paper empirically studies the impact of Sino-US technological gap on the technological spillover effects of trade.First of all,we use the database of Chinese industrial enterprises to calculate Chinese TFP.The technology gap is calculated by the ratio of two countries' TFP.At the same time,we use Malmquist productivity index to measure China 's technological progress.Secondly,the empirical model introduces the cross terms of trade variables and technology gap variables to explore the impact of Sino-US technological gap on the technological spillover effects.The regression uses double fixed effect model to control individual effects and time effects.Finally,we use export similarity index as a substitute indicator for robustness testing.At the same time,considering that a country's technological progress has a certain inertia,this paper introduces the first-order lag item of the industry's total technological change rate,and uses the GMM method for robustness test.Our research has five main conclusions.Firstly,China is gradually narrowing the technology gap with the U.S.in manufacturing industry,and has realized the replacement in some industries.Secondly,the trade between China and the United States has promoted China's technological progress.Both the "export learning effect" brought by export and the "import quantity-category effect" brought by imports are significant.Thirdly,the technological spillovers brought by trade have a "ceiling effect",and as the technology of China gradually approaches the United States,promoting domestic technological progress by trade becomes more difficult.Fourthly,compared with exports,the technological spillovers caused by import will encounter a diminishing situation more quickly when China's technology is gradually catching up with the United States.Last of all,there are certain problems of the R&D input structure in China.With the narrowing technological gap between China and the United States,traditional trade promotion strategies are increasingly difficult to achieve.Our government needs to pay attention to the following points.First of all,the government should encourage technologyleading companies to develop new products independently and encourage technologybackward companies to integrate into the international environment.Secondly,we should optimize the export structure and proactively enhance China's position in the international industrial chain.Thirdly,the government should adjust the investment structure of R&D and increase the using efficiency of R&D.Fourthly,we can strengthen the penetration of technology and foster an innovative cultural environment;Lastly,in order to optimize the institutional guarantee for innovation,we need to establish suitable innovation institutional environment.