| The world had witnessed the cooperative R&D wave during the 1960's and 1970's, and it has experienced a rapid development since 1980's. Researchers both from home and abroad attach great importance to cooperative R&D, as on the one hand, correct understanding of this concept is of far-reaching significance to policy-making. R&D cooperation has given a powerful shove-ahead to the technological progress, and at the mean time, strengthen the market power of the firms in the product market. On the other hand, the prior theories of the firm failed in explaining cooperative R&D. Research-and-development capabilities are regarded as the core competency of firms. R&D cooperation indicates that the firms have to share their research results with each other, which in turn erodes the competitiveness of these firms. Therefore, an increasing number of economists and sociologists are attracted to investigate cooperative R&D, making it a live question for study in the field of the economics of research and development.The cooperative R&D has two features, one of which is that the cooperative R&D is frequently observed in the high technology industry, especially in the information-technology industry. The second feature is that there is a U-shaped relationship between the size of firms and the ratio of cooperative R&D to total R&D. It can be further interpreted as that for one thing, cooperative R&D is related to the categories of technologies. Considering the compatibility of the information technology, firms have to share the results of research and development in order to make their products be compatible with that of others. This will affect the cooperative innovative strategy of those firms. For another, cooperative R&D is influenced by the size of enterprises. To be more specific, it is controlled by the firms'the structure of knowledge bade and market structure. Firms'structure of knowledge base can actively influence cooperative R&D, as emphasized in the existing literature that the apparent and hidden characteristics of knowledge have an effect on R&D cooperation. Cooperative R&D is regarded as the optimal individual decision, which is made without interference from other firms. In fact, cooperative R&D tends to be an interaction of strategies between various firms. Hence, it is better to analyze cooperative R&D on the basis of the game theory, and take both the structure of knowledge base and market structure into consideration.In this research, industrial organization theory, knowledge management theory, game theory, simulation, case study, and econometrics method are applied. Moreover, the principle of'from practice to theory and from theory to practice'is followed. Firstly, there are two features of cooperative R&D in high-tech firms. One of the features is that cooperative R&D is usually found in the high-tech industry, especially in the information technology. Additionally, there is a U-shaped relation between the size of firms and the ratio of cooperative R&D to total R&D. Secondly, this research deeply and systematically discusses the performance of the cooperative R&D and its determinants in high-tech firms from the perspectives firms'technology and size. Moreover, this dissertation competitively studies the performance of the standard-oriented technology, and at the same time, analyzes the causes of discrepancy in performance. In addition, key factors and mechanism of action of the U-shaped characteristics is investigated. Finally, on the basis of comparing policies adopted by the US, Japan and China government to encourage firms undertake technological innovation, this study proposes several policy suggestions by combining the results of theoretical and empirical study.Major findings of this dissertation are as follow. In view of firms'technology, the optimal innovation pattern of a firm is determined by the industry's inherent technical characteristics, and the optimal innovation pattern is controlled by the industry's difficulty in research and development and the network effect. In view of the size of the enterprises, firms in various sizes choose different proportion of investment in the cooperative R&D according to differences in the enterprises'basic knowledge structure and market structure. The former determines product differentiating, absorptivity of technology, and absolute cost advantage, while the latter controls the technology spillover and profits of an enterprise. Compare with that of the US government and Japan government, it is better to accurately seize the right time to issue and implement the policy of technological innovation. Meanwhile, it is important to select the right enterprises to encourage. Lastly, policies and measures should be improved.This paper is possibly distinguished as:in the aspect of content, it systematically and deeply discusses the cooperative R&D between two types of high-tech enterprises, representatively the one develops the compatibility of technology R&D, and the one active in both independent R&D and cooperative R&D. In the aspect of research perspective, this study, from the standpoint of people who diffuse the achievement of R&D, applies the information sharing decision to the model of R&D, which provides a better understanding of the interaction between cooperative innovation and information sharing decision, and at the same time, analyzes the impact of enterprises' basic knowledge structure and market structure on the proportion of investment in cooperative R&D. In the aspect of research method, this dissertation develops a new method of calculating firms'investment in cooperative R&D and independent R&D. Additionally, a new index, variance of knowledge, which is based on the patent information, is adopted to weight the firms' structure of knowledge base. Ultimately, a simple linear econometric model which reflexes the relation among the proportion of investment in cooperative R&D, firms' structure of knowledge base, and market structure is established.Theoretically, this study, on the one hand, increases the understanding of the relation between information sharing and cooperative R&D, the determinants of technology spillovers, and their impact on the achievement of cooperative R&D, and on the other, takes the structure of knowledge base and market competition environment as a breakthrough point to promote the awareness of the factors which influence firms'investment in R&D and the mechanism, as well as discloses the reason why firms in different sizes have different proportion of the investment in cooperative R&D. Practically, this research is of great practical significance to help firms in China to shake off the yoke of backward technology, small profit, short of funds in new round of R&D, and enlarging technology gap between advanced foreign firms. Meanwhile, it is effective in quickening construction of self-directed innovation capability, being market-share leader, and building of a national innovation system. |
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