The Impact of R&D Offshoring on the Home Knowledge Production of OECD Investing Regions

Lorena M. D’Agostino, Keld Laursen, Grazia D. Santangelo

    Research output: Working paperResearch

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the relationship between home and offshore R&D activities on the knowledge production of the investing home region. Debate is ongoing on whether R&D offshoring complements the R&D performed at home. In the light of increased offshoring of innovative activities to emerging countries, we explicitly focus on Brazil, Russia, India, China, Singapore and Taiwan. We suggest that complementarity should obtain, when home region and offshore R&D activities are dissimilar as well as when offshore R&D activities is about modular and less complex technologies. We ground our predictions on arguments related to geographical technological specialisation and reverse knowledge transfer from offshore locations to home regions within the more general open innovation trend. Using a theoretical framework based on the international business literature and the regional system of innovation perspective, we estimate a knowledge production function for a sample of 221 regions from 21 OECD countries with home region patent applications as the dependent variable. Our test supports our predictions on the complementarity between home region and offshore R&D.
    Original languageEnglish
    Place of PublicationFrederiksberg
    PublisherDRUID - Danish Research Unit for Industrial Dynamics
    Number of pages47
    ISBN (Print)9788778733016
    Publication statusPublished - 2010
    SeriesDRUID Working Paper
    Number10-19

    Keywords

    • Home region R&D
    • Offshore R&D
    • Knowledge production
    • Complementarity
    • Emerging countries

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