نقش جریان دانش ICT برای پویایی های سهم بازار بین المللی

This paper investigates the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) related knowledge flows for international market shares. Using bibliometric data on scientific publications, we analyse the relationship between the strength of 14 OECD countries in four ICT-related scientific fields and the ability of those countries to maintain and acquire export market shares in the OECD market, across 16 manufacturing industries over the period 1981–2003. We find that domestic and foreign ICT-related scientific knowledge flows have a positive and significant impact on export market shares in ICT industries, while only domestic flows positively affect export shares in non-ICT industries. We also find that small open economies benefit more than other countries from foreign knowledge flows both in ICT and in non-ICT industries.

International competitiveness is generally understood to refer to “the ability of a country to expand its [market] shares in domestic and world markets” (Magnier and Toujas-Bernate, 1994: 495, our insert in brackets). Such competitiveness of nations continues to be a concern for people working in academia (e.g., Leon-Ledesma, 2005) and for policy-makers (e.g., Obama and Biden, 2008). Even though many academic papers have been written about the drivers of international competitiveness, we still need to know much more about what determines it. Although few would deny the importance of standard price factors in affecting competitiveness or export market shares, there is an emerging consensus in the literature that non-price factors – particularly those related to technology – are a major determinant (e.g., Fagerberg, 1988, Amendola et al., 1993, Magnier and Toujas-Bernate, 1994, Amable and Verspagen, 1995, Carlin et al., 2001 and Montobbio, 2003). In general, studies that look at the technology factor have relied on “own-industry” technological activities, typically measured as research and development (R&D) spending or patenting activity. Recently, attempts have been made to incorporate technological flows (or “spillovers”)1 in models of international market share dynamics either by looking at embodied R&D flows between industries (Fagerberg, 1997, Laursen and Meliciani, 2000 and Laursen and Meliciani, 2002) or by estimating the effect of national and international knowledge stocks for trade performance (Gustavsson et al., 1999 and Leon-Ledesma, 2005). Although there are not many papers looking at such flows, the ones that exist have generally found support for the idea that intra-industry and inter-industry domestic knowledge flows matter for international export market shares, while the support for the importance of international knowledge flows, in this context, is much more limited. However – to our knowledge – no paper exists which looks at the role of national and international ICT knowledge flows in determining competitiveness while attempting to trace actual interactions between countries. Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have become centrally important in many industries of the economy and have a growing impact on the organisation of economic activity, due to the ample range of applications of the technologies. Moreover, in terms of types of technology diffused within and across nations, the ICT industries are the main sources of technology acquired in most developed countries (Papaconstantinou et al., 1998). However, capturing the importance and impacts of ICTs is always not straightforward (OECD, 2005). We combine research on the impact of technology on international economic performance with the bibliometric approach pertaining to the localized geographical reach of the benefits of scientific research (e.g., Jaffe et al., 1993, Hicks et al., 1994, Audretsch and Feldman, 1996 and Agrawal and Cockburn, 2003).2 More specifically, this paper is concerned with the importance of national and international science-based ICT knowledge flows for the ability of OECD countries to maintain or acquire export market shares at the industry level. The basic idea is to use the science-production relevance matrix, constructed by Laursen and Salter (2005). Based on publications by private business firms, the relevance of four ICT-related scientific fields for 16 manufacturing industries is conjectured. The procedure hinges on the assumption that when firms in particular industries publish papers in particular fields of science then they do it – at least partly – because they have, and wish to maintain, an “absorptive capacity” in the relevant scientific fields. In other words, we assume that firms from an industry that publishes in some fields will make use of knowledge developed within the same fields. Using this relevance scheme, we analyse the relationship between the strength of 14 OECD countries in four ICT-related scientific fields and the ability of those countries to maintain and acquire export market shares in the OECD market, across 16 manufacturing industries over the period 1981–2003. Among other variables, unit labour costs, the exchange rate and “own industry” technological activity are controlled for, while using a dynamic panel data model. The data used for the study are drawn from the ISI National Indicators, SPRU BESST, US Patent Office and from the OECD STAN databases. The idea of the present paper is not only to look at domestic sources of ICT-related knowledge, but also to try to assess the importance of international scientific knowledge flows in ICTs for the ability of OECD countries to maintain or acquire market shares at the 16 industry level. However, for calculating such flows of international scientific knowledge, country-level weights are needed in order to determine the importance of each country as a knowledge source to any of the other countries in the analysis. In this context we are using data on international co-publications in ICT fields of science across 23 partner countries. The key assumption here is that the more the scientists of a given country collaborate with scientists of another country, the more is drawn from the science-base of the foreign country. The main findings of the paper support the important role played by both domestic and foreign ICT-knowledge flows for international market share dynamics. However, we also find that the importance of such flows varies across industries (ICT and non-ICT industries) and across countries. In particular, small open economies benefit significantly more than other countries from foreign knowledge flows. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 contains a discussion of the existing theoretical and empirical literature on the role of technology and ICT-related knowledge flows for competitiveness. Section 3 describes the data and the construction of the knowledge flow variables, while Section 4 depicts the empirical specification and econometric methodology. In Section 5 our estimations are presented and discussed. Finally, Section 6 concludes.

This paper has focussed on the impact of ICT-related knowl- edgeflowsoninternationalcompetitiveness.Themainresultofthe paper is that such flows – both domestic and international – have a positive and significant impact on export shares in ICT-producing manufacturing industries. In other words, the positive effect of international knowledge flows seems to dominate in this case. When considering non-ICT industries domestic flows continue to have a significant impact on export shares, while international flowsaffectexportsharesonlyinasub-setofcountries(smallopen economies). Overall, our results are consistent with those of previous empirical analyses on the determinants of export shares that high- light the crucial role of both cost and technology advantages ( Fagerberg, 1988; Greenhalgh, 1990; Magnier and Toujas-Bernate, 1994; Amable and Verspagen, 1995; Anderton, 1999; Carlin et al., 2001 ). In this tradition, however, only few papers exist, examin- ing knowledge flows at an industry level. At this level, Laursen and Meliciani(2000) foundthat(trade-related)embodiedtechnological domestic upstream and downstream knowledge flows play a posi- tive and significant role on export shares in some industries (scale intensive and specialised supplier industries), while Laursen and Meliciani (2002) found that (also trade-related) embodied foreign knowledge flows do not play a significant role on bilateral trade in mostindustries.Theresultsofthispapercomplementtheprevious results. In fact, it seems that when we focus the attention on scien- tific disembodied knowledge flows and, in particular on ICT based knowledge flows, domestic knowledge flows appear to play an important role for export success in both ICT and non-ICT indus- tries. Moreover, in contrast to the previous research ( Laursen and Meliciani, 2002 ), we find that international science-based knowledge flows also play a role in determining market share dynamics—in particular in ICT industries. This may depend on the fact that we are considering scientific rather than trade related knowledgeflows(knowledgeflowsdirectlybasedontheexchange of ideas rather than on trading goods) and that this might be a better vehicle for the international diffusion of knowledge, partic- ularly for small open countries that have invested in establishing international networks in ICT-related fields. Related, while previ- ous studies have looked at knowledge flows broadly, in this paper, we have focussed on a specific set of knowledge flows—a set of flows that from a theoretical point of view should have pervasive effects across industries and countries. Our findings concerning the importance of national and inter- national knowledge flows as a result of the presence of a strong and ICT relevant national science-base, or the capability to develop internationalresearchnetworksinICT-relatedfields,hasimportant implications. First, in the context of trade performance, it appears that ICT is a pervasive technology, as domestic ICT flows have a positive impact on export market shares, not only in ICT produc- ing industries, but also when considering all industries together. Second, the potential pervasive benefits linked to these technolo- giesvarysubstantiallyacrosscountries,consistentwiththeviewof the crucial role played by the match between pervasive technolo- gies and specific institutions that facilitate or hinder their diffusion ( Freeman and Perez, 1988; Bresnahan and Trajtenberg, 1995 ). It is true – as previous studies on the impact of GPTs on productivity have shown – that the potential of the impact of the new tech- nologies on international competitiveness may not have been fully realised yet. However, this study has shown that most larger Euro- pean countries (with UK as the exception) have displayed a limited effortinperformingscientificresearchinICT-relatedfieldsascom- pared to the efforts made in the US, Canada and in Japan (see also, Dosi et al., 2006 ). The results of the paper suggest that it will be dif-ficult for these European countries to exploit the benefits of these newtechnologiesininternationalmarketsiftheydonotinvertthis negativetrend.Finally,thisstudyhasdemonstratedthatsmallopen economiesmaybenefitfrominternationalknowledgeflowsinICT- related fields. It is, however, important to note that the benefit of international research in ICT is not a free lunch: Since participa- tion in international networks is a precondition for gaining such benefits, it is simply not possible to take part in international col- laboration with scientists of the leading countries, within the field of ICT, if local (national) investments in ICT-related science are not made. This paper has come some way in analysing the role of national and international ICT knowledge flows as a determinant ofinternationalmarketsharedynamics.Importantaspectsremain, nevertheless, unexplored. Despite the fact that analyses is diffi- cult because of poor data availability, improvements involving the application of exports from services industries, and the use of FDI- related knowledge flows as an independent variable, should be underscoredascentrallyimportantcomponentsforfutureresearch in this area.