Gong, Robin Kaiji;
Li, Yao Amber;
Manova, Kalina;
Sun, Stephen Teng;
(2025)
Tickets to the global market: First US patent award and Chinese firm exports.
Journal of International Economics
, 157
, Article 104124. 10.1016/j.jinteco.2025.104124.
Preview |
Text
Manova_1-s2.0-S0022199625000807-main.pdf Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
We investigate how international patent activity enables firms from emerging economies to thrive in the global marketplace. We match Chinese customs data to US patent records, and leverage the quasi-random assignment of USPTO patent examiners to identify the causal effect of a US patent grant on the subsequent export performance of Chinese firms. Successful first-time patent applicants achieve significantly higher export growth, compared to otherwise similar first-time applicants that failed. This effect operates only in small part through market protection for technologically patent-related products in the US, and is largely driven by expansion in other markets. The response across destinations and products reveals that a US patent award signals the Chinese firm’s capacity to produce high-quality products and credibility to honor contracts, mitigating information frictions in international trade. There is little evidence for the relaxation of financial constraints or the promotion of follow-on innovation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Tickets to the global market: First US patent award and Chinese firm exports |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.jinteco.2025.104124 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jinteco.2025.104124 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Patent rights, innovation, export performance, trade, market protection, asymmetric information, signaling |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208058 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
