Research On Decision Of Enterprise Cooperative R&D With The Consideration Of Technology Spillovers

Technology innovation in China is facing capital, technical and institutional constraints. Cooperative R&D is the only way to overcome these constraints. Based on the transaction cost theory and the resource-based theory, the paper studies cooperative R&D behavior, which includes choice preference of cooperative R&D patterns and R&D investments based on technology spillovers by game theory approach, and reveals the inner mechanism of cooperative R&D with the background of industrial chain.Technology spillovers could be categorized in different ways. Technology spillovers could be grouped into incoming spillovers and outcoming spillovers from the direction of spillover, and horizontal spillovers and vertical spillovers according to the recivers of spillover. This paper analyzes the cooperative R&D in a setting where spillovers could be single or mixed and tests the impacts of technology spillovers, constructing a theoretical framework of cooperative R&D step by step through "Definition of basic concept-theoretical analysis-empirical test". The paper starts with the analysis of the motivation of cooperative R&D and of the impact of technology spillovers on cooperative R&D. Then the paper constructs two cooperative R&D descision models in a single spillover setting, which sever as important basis of referance to understand the interaction of different spillovers. Further, a cooperative R&D descision model in a setting of mixed spillover is constructed, considering the joint impact of different spillovers. At last the paper tests several hypotheses empirically using Chinese enterprise data by probit model and multivariate linear model.The results show that incoming spillovers have the expected positive effect on cooperative R&D. As far as outcoming spillovers are concerned, horizontal spillovers restrain cooperative R&D while vertical spillovers promote vertical cooperation and have no significant impact on horizontal cooperation. In horizontal cooperation, vertical spillovers impair the inhibiting effect of horizontal spillover on cooperation. But the results show no evidence that it would happen in vertical cooperation. It is found that firms aiming to improve the R&D success rate and utilization rate of R&D output are likely to engage in vertical cooperation and firms devoting to major technological breakthroughs tend to engage in horizontal cooperation. At the same time, vertical spillovers have a positive effect on R&D investment regardless of the cooperation pattern. In contrast, horizontal spillovers have a positive effect on R&D investment in horizontal cooperation and a negative effect on R&D investment in vertical cooperation. What’s more, it is also shown that appropriability has a moderating effect on the relationship between spillovers and R&D effort. In addition, R&D expenditures of vertical cooperation will be higher than those of horizontal cooperationfrom enterprise gross R&D expenditures. Therefore, governments need to make good use of public policy to promote vertical cooperation between enterprises for social optimum.