Inventing Together: Exploring the Nature of International Knowledge Spillovers in Latin America

This paper studies the nature, sources and determinants of international patenting activity in LatinAmerican countries (LACs) and examines the extent to which LACs benefit from R&D that isperformed in the G-5 countries (France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States). Byusing patents and patent citations at the United States Patent and Trademark Office we trace intrasectoral knowledge flows from G-5 countries to LACs. We study the impact of three channels ofspillovers: pure spillovers, patent citations related spillovers, and face-to-face contact spillovers. Ourresults, based on data for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, suggest that internationalknowledge spillovers from the G-5 countries are a significant determinant of inventive activity over theperiod 1988-2003. In particular we find that the stock of ideas produced in the US has a strong impacton the international patenting activity of these countries. Moreover controlling for US-driven purespillover effects, bilateral patent citations and face-to-face relationships between inventors are bothimportant additional mechanisms of knowledge transmission. Some of our results suggest that the lattermechanism is more important than the former.