The Role of Foreign Institutional Investors in Facilitating Knowledge Diffusion across Geographic Boundaries: Evidence from Cross-Border Patent Citations

主講人 : 王征 教授

Arguably, one of the primary drivers of innovation is the spread of innovative knowledge. In this paper, we use firms' references to existing patents from foreign origins as a novel measure to trace the flow of knowledge across national borders and explore the potential role of foreign institutional investors in facilitating global knowledge diffusion. Our empirical analyses provide robust evidence on a significant and positive relationship between foreign institutional ownership and the frequency of investee firms citing patents from the home countries of the foreign institutional investors. These citations signify the diffusion of innovative knowledge originating from the home countries of foreign institutional investors to the investee firms. To establish causal inferences, we employ two quasi-exogenous shocks that result in changes to firms' foreign institutional ownership. Our results further suggest that foreign institutional investors from more culturally, linguistically, and geographically distant countries and those focusing on long-horizon or high-tech investment may play a more important role in disseminating innovative knowledge from their home countries.

主講人簡介：

王征，中國香港城市大學的正教授、協理副校長（Associate Vice President）。王征教授近年來在The Accounting Review，Contemporary Accounting Research，Organization Science，Production and Operations Management等UTD24和FT50期刊發表論文十余篇，是享有盛名的知名學者。她同時在Production and Operations Management, Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance, Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting and Economics等期刊擔任副主編或編委的職務。