Creating competition? Globalisation and the emergence of new technology producers

This paper studies the emergence of new countries as contributors to technology generation in the world economy and assesses the relationship between this and globalisation (through trade, inward FDI and international migration). It considers two measures of technology generation, viz. a country's share of licensing revenues and of foreign origin patenting in the US, thus covering different phases and aspects of technological catch-up across countries. The paper uses a novel index to track the influence of new countries as technology generators in these datasets and uses time series techniques to understand the causal relationship between globalisation and the emergence of new technology producers. Our findings suggest a role for increasing international direct investment as a factor causing the emergence of new countries with the higher level competitiveness associated with patenting, but not in the recent surge of new countries with the basic capabilities needed to become licensors in the world economy. However, an increase in the international spread of the subsidiary sources of the patenting activity of multinationals appears to follow periods when the world economy becomes less open to trade.