Do alliances promote knowledge flows?

We explore the role of interfirm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. We argue that knowledge flows between alliance partners will be greater than flows between pairs of nonallied firms, and less than flows between units within single firms. Using patent citations as a proxy...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of financial economics 2006-04, Vol.80 (1), p.5-33
Main Authors: Gomes-Casseres, Benjamin, Hagedoorn, John, Jaffe, Adam B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alliances
Business economics
Business partnership
Economic networks
Empirical tests
Knowledge
Knowledge management
Knowledge transfer
Multinational companies
Multinational corporations
Multinational enterprises
Studies
Technology transfer
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We explore the role of interfirm alliances as a mechanism for sharing technological knowledge. We argue that knowledge flows between alliance partners will be greater than flows between pairs of nonallied firms, and less than flows between units within single firms. Using patent citations as a proxy for knowledge flows, we find results that are consistent with these expectations. We then explore how firm characteristics affect knowledge flows within alliances and find positive effects due to technological, geographic, and business similarities between partners. We use alliance data from MERIT, patent data from the USPTO, and firm data from Compustat.
ISSN:0304-405X
1879-2774
DOI:10.1016/j.jfineco.2004.08.011