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Do Cross-border Patents Promote Trade?

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  • Brunel, Claire
  • Zylkin, Thomas

Abstract

While we would expect that cross-border patents are used to protect a technology that is made available in another country, that technology could either be produced locally or imported. International patent filings could therefore be either complements or substitutes to international trade. This study combines data on patenting and trade for 149 countries and 249 industries between 1974 and 2006 with a "three-way" PPML panel data model that addresses several biases emphasized in the trade literature in order to provide a systematic analysis of how bilateral trade responds to cross-border patent filings. We find that cross-border patents have a positive (complementary) overall effect on the patent-filing country's exports to the patent-granting country and no effect overall on imports flowing in the opposite direction. These effects vary substantially across industries and destination markets. Patents promote significantly more bilateral export growth--and significantly less bilateral import growth--in less-differentiated industries and are found to have stronger effects on exports to more distant destinations. These findings support the interpretation that cross-border patents are mainly used to protect cost and/or quality innovations from being adopted by producers of competing products in the patent-granting country.

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  • Brunel, Claire & Zylkin, Thomas, 2019. "Do Cross-border Patents Promote Trade?," MPRA Paper 92514, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:92514
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    Cited by:

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    2. Phan Thanh Hoan & Duong Thi Dieu My, 2022. "The Determinants of Vietnam’s Information and Communication Technologies Exports to the European Union," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 57(2), pages 148-159, May.
    3. Robin Kaiji Gong & Yao Amber Li & Kalina Manova & Stephen Teng Sun & Kalina B. Manova, 2023. "Tickets to the Global Market: First US Patent Awards and Chinese Firm Exports," CESifo Working Paper Series 10790, CESifo.
    4. French, Scott & Zylkin, Tom, 2024. "The effects of free trade agreements on product-level trade," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).

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    Keywords

    F10; F13; F14; O34; K33;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • K33 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - International Law
    • O34 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Intellectual Property and Intellectual Capital

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