International licensing of technology: empirical evidence |
| |
| Authors: | Robert Wilson |
| |
| Institution: | Antitrust Division, US Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., USA |
| |
| Abstract: | This paper summarizes recent empirical evidence on international licensing of technology and its determinants. Two empirical questions are treated. First, does evidence support a view that international licensing is more prevalent than domestic licensing? Second, what does the evidence imply about the causes of international versus domestic differences?Aggregate licensing data support the view of greater international than domestic licensing. This evidence is not conclusive, however, because the size of a country in relation to the rest of the world has an important influence on the data.Some evidence supports an ‘expansion constraint’ view that financial and organizational constraints are greater for overseas than domestic expansion and therefore licensing tends to be more popular internationally. More extensive evidence supports an additional view of the causes of international versus domestic licensing differences. This explanation, the ‘oligopoly’ view, is that firms seek to maintain segmented geographic markets by not licensing their technology to domestic competitors. Support for the ‘oligopoly’ view comes from our previous study of US licensing, from Japanese data, and from an independent British study. An interpretation of empirical results for Japan is that in other countries, notably the US, rival firms are unwilling to license their know-how and production secrets to each other for fear of losing their market position. There is, however, a valuable pool of technology which they could license, and in fact are willing to license to firms that aren't expected to be direct competitors. These licensees tend to be in foreign countries because the rivals' possibilities for expansion there are limited. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
| 本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录！ |
|
