On “Trade Induced Technical Change: The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT, and Productivity”

Douglas L. Campbell; Karsten Mau

doi:10.1093/restud/rdab037

On “Trade Induced Technical Change: The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT, and Productivity”

Douglas L. Campbell^*, Karsten Mau

^*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

Bloom et al. (2016) find that Chinese import competition induced a rise in patenting, IT adoption, and total factor productivity (TFP) by up to 30% of the total increase in Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We uncover several coding errors in an important robustness check of their patent results. When corrected, we find no statistically significant relationship between Chinese competition and patents. Other specifications in the original paper use a problematic log(1+patents) transformation. This normalization induces bias given low average patent counts for firms in China-competing sectors and rapidly declining patents across the sample.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	2555–2559
Number of pages	5
Journal	Review of Economic Studies
Volume	88
Issue number	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdab037
Publication status	Published - Oct 2021

Keywords

Patents
China
Europe
Textiles
Trade shocks
Manufacturing

Access to Document

10.1093/restud/rdab037

Full TextFinal published version, 179 KBLicence: Taverne

Cite this

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title = "On “Trade Induced Technical Change: The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT, and Productivity”",

abstract = "Bloom et al. (2016) find that Chinese import competition induced a rise in patenting, IT adoption, and total factor productivity (TFP) by up to 30% of the total increase in Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We uncover several coding errors in an important robustness check of their patent results. When corrected, we find no statistically significant relationship between Chinese competition and patents. Other specifications in the original paper use a problematic log(1+patents) transformation. This normalization induces bias given low average patent counts for firms in China-competing sectors and rapidly declining patents across the sample.",

keywords = "Patents, China, Europe, Textiles, Trade shocks, Manufacturing",

author = "Campbell, {Douglas L.} and Karsten Mau",

note = "Data sources: Bloom et al. (2016) “Trade Induced Technical Change? The Impact of Chinese Imports on Innovation, IT and Productivity”, The Review of Economic Studies 83, 87–117. Accessed via: http://www.stanford.edu/~nbloom/TITC.zip",

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AB - Bloom et al. (2016) find that Chinese import competition induced a rise in patenting, IT adoption, and total factor productivity (TFP) by up to 30% of the total increase in Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s. We uncover several coding errors in an important robustness check of their patent results. When corrected, we find no statistically significant relationship between Chinese competition and patents. Other specifications in the original paper use a problematic log(1+patents) transformation. This normalization induces bias given low average patent counts for firms in China-competing sectors and rapidly declining patents across the sample.

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