Is Co-Invention Expediting Technological Catch Up? A Study of Collaboration between Emerging Country Firms and EU inventors

Firms from emerging countries are going global, and Europe is attracting around one-third of their direct outward investments. Growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up. In this paper we analyze Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese cross-border inventions with European Union (EU-27) inventors, during the period 1990–2012. Our results suggest that these inventions represent an opportunity for emerging country firms to accumulate technological capabilities, access frontier knowledge, and appropriate the property rights of co-inventions. This paper contributes to understanding catching up by emerging country firms.