IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/4997.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition, imitation, and technical change : quality vs. variety

Author

Listed:
  • Cusolito, Ana

Abstract

Some researchers have documented that the path of development is remarkably related to the pattern of sectoral diversification. Others have highlighted the relation between productive specialization and economic progress. This paper explores the role of product market competition and intellectual property rights protection in the pattern of sectoral diversification. The paper confirms the insight of the innovation literature, that competition induces firms to specialize and upgrade the quality of existing goods. However, it reveals a new force, called the imitation effect, through which competition biases technical change toward product diversification. The paper shows that if knowledge spillovers increase with imitation, or the degree of product substitution is high, weak protection of property rights encourages firms to create low-quality goods, thereby directing technical change toward diversification. The predictions are tested with data on Italian firms'innovation activity. They are found to be consistent with observed behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Cusolito, Ana, 2009. "Competition, imitation, and technical change : quality vs. variety," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4997, The World Bank.
    • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4997
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2009/08/28/000158349_20090828081350/Rendered/PDF/WPS4997.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Motta, Massimo, 1993. "Endogenous Quality Choice: Price vs. Quantity Competition," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 113-131, June.
    2. Jean Imbs & Romain Wacziarg, 2003. "Stages of Diversification," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 63-86, March.
    3. Helpman, Elhanan, 1993. "Innovation, Imitation, and Intellectual Property Rights," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(6), pages 1247-1280, November.
    4. Christian Broda & David E. Weinstein, 2006. "Globalization and the Gains From Variety," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 541-585.
    5. Amit Khandelwal, 2010. "The Long and Short (of) Quality Ladders," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 77(4), pages 1450-1476.
    6. Juan Carlos Hallak & Peter K. Schott, 2011. "Estimating Cross-Country Differences in Product Quality," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 126(1), pages 417-474.
    7. Eric J. Bartelsman & Wayne Gray, 1996. "The NBER Manufacturing Productivity Database," NBER Technical Working Papers 0205, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Bronwyn H. Hall & Adam B. Jaffe & Manuel Trajtenberg, 2001. "The NBER Patent Citation Data File: Lessons, Insights and Methodological Tools," NBER Working Papers 8498, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Daron Acemoglu, 2002. "Directed Technical Change," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(4), pages 781-809.
    10. Rauch, James E., 1999. "Networks versus markets in international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 7-35, June.
    11. Symeonidis, George, 2003. "Comparing Cournot and Bertrand equilibria in a differentiated duopoly with product R&D," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 39-55, January.
    12. Sutton, John, 1996. "Technology and market structure," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(3-5), pages 511-530, April.
    13. Philippe Aghion & Nick Bloom & Richard Blundell & Rachel Griffith & Peter Howitt, 2005. "Competition and Innovation: an Inverted-U Relationship," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(2), pages 701-728.
    14. Lai, Edwin L. -C., 1998. "International intellectual property rights protection and the rate of product innovation," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 133-153, February.
    15. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen, 2004. "Why Some Firms Export," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(2), pages 561-569, May.
    16. Blundell, Richard & Griffith, Rachel & Van Reenen, John, 1995. "Dynamic Count Data Models of Technological Innovation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 105(429), pages 333-344, March.
    17. Saint-Paul, Gilles, 1992. "Technological choice, financial markets and economic development," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(4), pages 763-781, May.
    18. Xavier Vives, 2008. "Innovation And Competitive Pressure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 419-469, December.
    19. Segerstrom, Paul & Dinopoulos, Elias, 2003. "A Theory of North-South Trade and Globalization," CEPR Discussion Papers 4140, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. Dasgupta, Partha & Stiglitz, Joseph, 1980. "Industrial Structure and the Nature of Innovative Activity," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 90(358), pages 266-293, June.
    21. Shaked, Avner & Sutton, John, 1987. "Product Differentiation and Industrial Structure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(2), pages 131-146, December.
    22. Ginarte, Juan C. & Park, Walter G., 1997. "Determinants of patent rights: A cross-national study," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 283-301, October.
    23. Peter K. Schott, 2004. "Across-Product Versus Within-Product Specialization in International Trade," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(2), pages 647-678.
    24. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1995. "Complementarities and fit strategy, structure, and organizational change in manufacturing," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2-3), pages 179-208, April.
    25. Nickell, Stephen J, 1996. "Competition and Corporate Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(4), pages 724-746, August.
    26. Levin, Richard C & Cohen, Wesley M & Mowery, David C, 1985. "R&D Appropriability, Opportunity, and Market Structure: New Evidence on Some Schumpeterian Hypotheses," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 75(2), pages 20-24, May.
    27. David Hummels & Peter J. Klenow, 2005. "The Variety and Quality of a Nation's Exports," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 704-723, June.
    28. Bruno Cassiman & Reinhilde Veugelers, 2006. "In Search of Complementarity in Innovation Strategy: Internal R& D and External Knowledge Acquisition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(1), pages 68-82, January.
    29. Spence, Michael, 1984. "Cost Reduction, Competition, and Industry Performance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 101-121, January.
    30. Peter Howitt, 1999. "Steady Endogenous Growth with Population and R & D Inputs Growing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(4), pages 715-730, August.
    31. Yang, Guifang & Maskus, Keith E., 2001. "Intellectual property rights, licensing, and innovation in an endogenous product-cycle model," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 169-187, February.
    32. Aghion, Philippe & Harris, Christopher & Vickers, John, 1997. "Competition and growth with step-by-step innovation: An example," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(3-5), pages 771-782, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Raphael Auer & Philip Sauré, 2011. "Spatial Competition in Quality, Demand Induced Innovation, and Schumpeterian Growth," DEGIT Conference Papers c016_067, DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade.
    2. Alberto Bucci, 2014. "Population, competition, innovation, and economic growth with and without human capital investment," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 61(1), pages 61-84, April.
    3. Charles Bérubé & Marc Duhamel & Daniel Ershov, 2012. "Market Incentives for Business Innovation: Results from Canada," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 47-65, March.
    4. Antoniades, Alexis, 2015. "Heterogeneous Firms, Quality, and Trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 263-273.
    5. Cohen, Wesley M., 2010. "Fifty Years of Empirical Studies of Innovative Activity and Performance," Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, in: Bronwyn H. Hall & Nathan Rosenberg (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Innovation, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 129-213, Elsevier.
    6. Aghion, Philippe & Akcigit, Ufuk & Howitt, Peter, 2014. "What Do We Learn From Schumpeterian Growth Theory?," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 515-563, Elsevier.
    7. Gino A.Gancia, 2003. "Globalization, Divergence and Stagnation," Development Working Papers 174, Centro Studi Luca d'Agliano, University of Milano.
    8. Colantone, Italo & Crinò, Rosario, 2014. "New imported inputs, new domestic products," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(1), pages 147-165.
    9. Gancia, Gino & Bonfiglioli, Alessandra, 2008. "North-South trade and directed technical change," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 276-295, December.
    10. Gancia, Gino & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2005. "Horizontal Innovation in the Theory of Growth and Development," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 3, pages 111-170, Elsevier.
    11. Acemoglu, Daron & Gancia, Gino & Zilibotti, Fabrizio, 2012. "Competing engines of growth: Innovation and standardization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(2), pages 570-601.3.
    12. Ronald Goettler & Brett Gordon, 2014. "Competition and product innovation in dynamic oligopoly," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 12(1), pages 1-42, March.
    13. Mary Amiti & Amit K. Khandelwal, 2013. "Import Competition and Quality Upgrading," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 95(2), pages 476-490, May.
    14. Maurice Kugler & Eric Verhoogen, 2012. "Prices, Plant Size, and Product Quality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 307-339.
    15. Xavier Vives, 2008. "Innovation And Competitive Pressure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 419-469, December.
    16. Ricardo D. Brito & Eduardo Correia de Souza & Rodrigo Moita, 2024. "Separating Vertical from Horizontal Differentiation," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 64(2), pages 183-218, March.
    17. Davide Fantino, 2008. "R&D and market structure in a horizontal differentiation framework," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 658, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    18. Kilponen, Juha & Santavirta, Torsten, 2004. "Competition and Innovation - Microeconometric Evidence using Finnish Data," Research Reports 113, VATT Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Gnidchenko, Andrey A., 2021. "Structural transformation and quality ladders: Evidence from the new Theil's decomposition," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 281-291.
    20. Jonathan Eaton & Ana Cecília Fieler, 2019. "The Margins of Trade," NBER Working Papers 26124, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Education for Development (superceded); E-Business; Markets and Market Access; Economic Theory&Research; Labor Policies;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:4997. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.