Knowledge sourcing and firm performance in an industrializing economy: the case of Taiwan in the 1990s.

This paper examines the impact of R&D and technology imports on firm performance in Taiwan’s manufacturing industry. Using a panel of 27,754 firms observed from 1992 to 1995, we estimate Translog production functions in twenty 2-digit industries. We implement four estimations procedures: fixed-effect regression, random-effect GLS, Hausman-Taylor estimator, and Stochastic Frontier Estimation. Our most reliable estimates, obtained with fixed effect and Hausman-Taylor models, show that knowledge inputs have a significant impact on firm sales in a small number of industries, and suggest that R&D and technology imports are more likely to be complements rather than substitutes.