Impacts of codified knowledge index on the allocation of overseas inventors by emerging countries: evidence from PCT patent activities in China

Abstract

Based on the backward citation information of patents and the geographical information of inventors, this study constructed an overlap index of highly-cited patent technologies between 31 provinces in mainland China and 49 foreign countries (or regions) with active PCT patent inventors (1998–2017), in order to depict the bilateral codified knowledge relatedness index. It further investigates its impact on the scale of allocation of overseas inventors by Chinese patent activities. According to the results, the codified knowledge relatedness significantly increased the scale of overseas patent inventors imported to China, that is, for every 1000 patents added in the technological overlap of highly-cited patents, the number of local inventors introduced from foreign countries (or regions) to local high-quality patent activities in China increased by 14, and this effect is mainly concentrated in the active innovation areas around the world. Further study showed that the impact of the bilateral tacit knowledge linkage on the allocation of overseas inventors with the codified knowledge relatedness was substitutive, and this substitutability decreased with the improved quality of innovation activities.