International Technology Transfer Policies

Abstract

This paper is published under the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and the arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of OECD countries.

Measuring distortions in international markets

“…Conversely, a broad-based membership may erode the perceived benefits of collaborations by making it harder for participants to coalesce around a shared research agenda. 10 Firms taking part in research collaborations are usually themselves large producers of semiconductors or semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Founding members of US consortium Sematech, which was formed in 1987 in response to Japan's growing market share in semiconductors, included, for instance, large chip producers such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), IBM, Intel, Micron, and Texas Instruments (Randazzese, 1996[14]; Irwin and Klenow, 10 Randazzese (1996 [14]) suggests this was the case in the early days of Sematech, once a leading US research consortium on semiconductors.…”

“…Short product cycles in semiconductors can make it difficult to establish a firm separation between pre-competitive, basic research on the one hand, and product development on the other. This reflects the more general consideration that "with shorter product cycles, arguably the time allotted for all types of [firm-level] R&D has been truncated and tends to converge" (Amsden and Tschang, 2003 [10]). That trend also coincides with growing pressures to make public and academic research closer to markets and demonstrate product applications sooner.…”

Trade, investment and intangibles

“…Chen, Los and Timmer (2018 [5]) estimate that between 2004 and 2014 the share of income derived from intangible assets in total GVC income consistently amounted to more than 30%. The OECD's own work on the measurement of returns to intangible capital in GVCs (Alsamawi et al, 2020 [9]) estimates that the share of intangible capital in manufacturing GVC income has increased from 25 to 27% during the period 2005-2015. Indeed, in many competitive markets, firms need to continuously invest in intangible capital to stay abreast with their rivals (Teece, 2015[22]).…”

International Technology Transfer, Innovation and Economic Development of European Union Countries in 2008-2017

“…Apart from the transfer of codified knowledge, embodied in investment goods and documentation, there should occur at the same time a flow of uncodified knowledge, e.g. technical support in the form of training and temporary migration of qualified staff, needed to help properly implement and supervise further development of technologies transferred via market channels (Andrenelli et al, 2019;United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2014).…”