Import Penetration and Domestic Innovation: A View into Dynamic Gains from Trade, Accessible Data
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Figure 1. Total Patents, 1975-2003.
This figure plots the number of patents with a primary U.S. inventor (blue line) recorded in the U.S. Patent and Inventor Database and the number of patents matched with the Silverman (2002) concordance (red line). The two series track each other accurately: the number of applications, after remaining roughly steady through the 1980s, rapidly increased in the 1990s before moving down somewhat in the early 2000s.
Figure 2. Import Liberalization, Top Three U.S. partners, 1991-2003.
The figure shows measures of import penetration for the top three U.S. partners. The top panel summarizes the average import tariffs for goods imported from Canada, Mexico, and China. Tariffs on Chinese imports declined by about 4 percentage points during the period of analysis; Mexican imports experienced similar tariff declines, while tariffs on Canadian goods, already closed to zero, remained little changed. The bottom panel shows the import flows from the partner countries. Although Chinese imports boomed during the period of analysis, following large tariffs declines during the 1990s and early 2000s, import flows from Canada and Mexico also increased before flattening out toward the end of our sample.