The globalization of technology in emerging markets: a gravity model on the determinants of international patent collaborations

This paper analyzes the determinants of different types of international technological collaborations among patents’ inventors between emerging and advanced countries. Technological collaborations generate knowledge flows between inventors through interpersonal and face to face contacts. We use US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent applications for a panel of eleven emerging economies and seven advanced countries (90-04) and a novel database that exploits information on companies’ country of origin. We estimate the impact of geographical distance and various economic and institutional variables using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML) and show that results vary according to the type of collaborations considered and to the country of origin (emerging vs. advanced) of the involved companies. Geographical distance affects international technological collaborations only when the applicant’s ownership is in the emerging country. Fixed effect estimates show that stronger IPRs positively affect international technological collaborations only when stemming from subsidiaries of multinational firms.