EXPORT PERFORMANCE OF ENVIRONMENTALLY SENSITIVE GOODS : A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

In this paper I examine whether stringent environmental standards reduce the international competitiveness of environmentally sensitive industries using a comprehensive dataset of trade flows of environmentally sensitive goods (ESGs) disaggregated at the four-digit level of the Standard International Trade Classification. The data relate to the period from 1965 to 1995 and cover 34 countries which accounted for nearly 80 per cent of world exports of ESGs in 1995. The important empirical finding is that export performance of ESGs for most of the countries remained unchanged between the 1960s and 1990s despite the introduction of stringent environmental standards in most developed countries in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus the claim that higher environmental standards reduce the international competitiveness of ESGs can not be justified in the light of available data.environmentally sensitive goods, ESGs, Standard International Trade Classification, competitiveness

Offshore Outsourcing, Contractual R&D and Intellectual Property in Developing Countries

This paper examines the role of intellectual property in developing countries in offshore outsourcing of R&D. We find that strengthened intellectual property protection in developing countries provides incentive for firms, both multinational and local, to specialize in undertaking an R&D activity in which it has competitive advantage (the specialization effect). It also facilitates the process for local firms to switch from imitators to potential innovators (the switching effect). We demonstrate that the multinational firm's strategic behavior on IPR enforcement can be used as an effective instrument to subsidize contractual research and development in developing countries (the subsidizing effect). We further illustrate how a policy mix of IPR and FDI subsidy in developing countries affects R&D activities adding an offshore R&D subsidiary as an additional organizational form.Intellectual Property Rights; Contractual R&D; R&D Chain