Trade and Industrial Policy Subtleties with International Licensing

We see various hybrid forms of organization and competition in which domestic and foreign firms may cooperate in some phases of production such as technology development and then compete in product markets. We assume that for a foreign firm to produce a good for export into its rival's domestic market, it has to acquire technology either through research and development (R&D) or licensing from the domestic firm. The domestic firm has an incentive to offer a licensing contract that deters the foreign firm from conducting its own R&D, but this in turn creates an interdependency not considered in the traditional literature. We show that both domestic and foreign optimal policies with licensing can be the exact opposite of optimal policies without licensing. Interestingly, by imposing an export tax on the "foreign" firm, the foreign government can shift the licensing revenue from the "domestic" firm.