Speaker: Lee Branstetter Professor of Economics and Public Policy (Joint appointment with the Social and Decision Sciences department)

Date & Time: May 8, 9:00-10:30 Beijing Time

Location: Room 302, School of Public Policy and Management, Tsinghua University


Abstract :
The rapid rise of China and India as innovating nations seems to contradict conventional views of the economic growth and development process. In standard models, the acquisition of innovative capacity in frontier technologies emerges as one of the final stages in a long development process. China and India are still poor, yet advanced nations are granting rapidly growing numbers of patents to inventors based in these countries. Our analysis of these patents shows that a majority of them are granted to local inventor teams working for foreign multinationals. An important fraction of these patents also incorporate direct intellectual inputs from researchers outside China or India, a trend that we characterize as "international co-invention." As such, the international patenting surge of China and India does not represent a challenge to traditional models of growth and development, so much as it represents a move toward an expanded international division of labor within global R&D networks.

Bio:
Lee Branstetter is a professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, with a joint appointment in CMU's Heinz College, School of Public Policy and Management, and its Dietrich College, Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Branstetter is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He served as the Senior Economist for International Trade and Investment at President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers in 2011-2012. Before moving to Carnegie Mellon, Branstetter was the Daniel Stanton Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, where he directed the International Business Program and was affiliated with the Center on Japanese Economy and Business. Branstetter also served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of International Economics from 2003-2011.

Branstetter has conducted research in the domains of innovation, the economics of intellectual property, international technology transfer, and economic growth and development in Asia. His recent work examines the globalization of R&D, innovation and trade conflict in clean energy technologies, and the impact of changes in patent law on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the RAND Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Industrial Economics.

Branstetter received his PhD in economics from Harvard University in 1996 and his BA from Northwestern University in 1991.