Mapping U.S.–China Technology Decoupling: Policies, Innovation, and Firm Performance

Abstract

We develop measures of technology decoupling and dependence between the United States and China based on combined patent data. The first two decades of the century witnessed a steady increase in technology integration (or less decoupling), but China’s dependence on the United States increased (decreased) during the first (second) decade. Firms covered by China’s Strategic Emerging Industries policies became less decoupled with the United States, gained cash flows, and gained valuation, but they saw no improvement in either innovation output/quality or productivity. Post-U.S. sanctions, firms in sanctioned sectors and their downstream suffered in performance but also became less decoupled with the United States. However, firms in the upstream of the sanctioned sectors improved productivity and produced more high-quality innovations. This paper was accepted by William Cong, finance. Funding: P. Han acknowledges financial support from China’s Natural Science Foundation [Grant 72103003]. W. Jiang acknowledges financial support from the Chazen Institute of Global Business at Columbia Business School. D. Mei acknowledges financial support from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Business Research Initiative [grant with Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business and Singapore Management University]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.02057 .