Abstract
Against the backdrop of the accelerated
evolution of the new industrial revolution, the global flow of innovation
factors has accelerated, and innovation activities have increasingly broken
through geographical restrictions, exhibiting deeply globalized characteristics.
This paper employs a cross-country panel data-set for the period 2009-2015
based on the Chinese listed enterprises and multiple sources such as the CEPII
database, and constructs a multiple fixed-effects model to conduct benchmark
regression and heterogeneity analyses. To ensure the convinced regression
results, this paper further applies three robustness methods for testing. It is
found that, firstly, multinational innovation as a whole significantly
increases the level of export diversification of enterprises, and this finding
passes the robustness test. Among them, the promotion effect of foreign patent
applications in China on export diversification is significantly stronger than
that of Chinese overseas patent applications. Secondly, the heterogeneity
analysis based on the level of national economic development shows that patent
layout and technology introduction for high-income countries have a more
significant effect on export product diversification, while the effect of
low-income countries is relatively limited.
Keywords: Multinational Innovation, Overseas Patent Applications,
Foreign Patents in China, Export Diversification of Enterprises.