PHILIPP BOEING
CURRENT RESEARCH (SELECTION)
The Misuse of China's R&D Subsidies: Estimating Treatment Effects With One-Sided Non-compliance
(with B. Peters)
We investigate the misuse of R&D subsidies and evaluate its consequences for policy effectiveness. Developing a theoretical framework and using Chinese firm-level data for 2001-2011, we identify that 42% of grantees misappropriated R&D subsidies for non-R&D purposes, accounting for 53% of total R&D subsidies. Misuse leads to a substantial loss in the causal impact of R&D subsidies, as measured by the difference between the intention-to-treat and complier average causal effect. R&D expenditures could have been stimulated beyond the subsidy amount (additionality), but misuse (noncompliance) resulted in medium-level partial crowding out, reducing the effectiveness of China’s R&D policy by more than half.
The Anatomy of Chinese Innovation: Insights on Patent Quality and Ownership Funded by BMBF
(with L. Brandt, R. Dai, K. Lim, B. Peters)
We develop a new method to measure the importance of a patent for subsequent innovation, based on the use of a Large Language Model to process patent text data and a new model of the innovation process. We apply this method to study the evolution of patenting in China from 1985-2019, also classifying patent ownership using a comprehensive business registry. Our analysis yields seven novel facts about Chinese patenting. Among these are that patenting has become narrower and less innovative over time; that knowledge within China has become more important than knowledge outside of China for directing innovative activity in China; and that knowledge produced by Chinese entities within China has been more important than knowledge produced by foreign entities filing patents in China.
We introduce a conceptual framework of global technological impact that assesses a country's unilateral impact on another country’s knowledge base and, in turn, derives its bilateral and global impact. To implement this framework empirically, we develop novel measures of technological impact using citation data from International Search Reports (ISR) in the universe of Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applications over the past two decades. For the leading innovating countries, we document substantial heterogeneity in positions along the spectrum from technological independence to dependence. The US exhibits the highest level of global technological independence, followed by Japan and Korea, while Europe and China are globally dependent. Over time, the US and Korea remain relatively stable, Japan declines after an earlier increase, Europe increases gradually, and China shows the largest increase from a low initial level. Additional analysis based on international trade data shows that China has reached a leading position, highlighting an important difference between innovation and production.