Laços internacionais complementares e diversificação tecnológica dos países: uma análise com dados de patente para os escritórios do USPTO e EPO

Abstract

It is easier to diversify into technology sectors that are similar to those in which one is already specialized. However, peripheral countries have few capabilities and therefore have a greater difficulty to acess complex technologies, perpetuating inequalities between countries. A possible solution is to colaborate with other countries, supplementing the absence of local capabilities through these contacts. Thus, not only should this effect be greater for less complex countries, but the impact should be greater when collaborating with countries whose technological structure is not as close or as distant, but complementary. This work test these hypothesis using international patent data for the USPTO and EPO offices between 2000 and 2019. By estabilishing ties through patent co-application and using the complementary index proposed by Balland and Boschma (2021), through Probit and Logit models with fixed-effects and clustered errors, evidence is found that countries that colaborate with others that have similar capabilities in a technology have a greater probability of entering in that technology. This effect is robust to different specifications and is even greater for less complex countries. However, we find this impact only after controlling for unobserved country effects, the impact being actually the opposite when disregarded. This possibly indicates something that we can see in the network of international colaborations that developed countries are its biggest beneficiaries, simply because they are the ones that colaborates the most. Besides, having similar capabilities locally is still related to a greater probability of specialization in new technologies, which adds to the “principle of relatedness”. Therefore, this work at the same time as providing new evidence at the international level, raises new questions and challenges for future works, especially as to whether links with other countries actually mitigate or deepen inequalities between countries.