EAI Fellows Program Working Paper Series No.46
 

Author

Matthew A. Shapiro is an Associate Professor of Political Science, Lewis College of Human Sciences, Illinois Institute of Technology. He was trained in political science, economics, and public policy at the University of California at San Diego (B.A.) and the University of Southern California (M.A. & Ph.D). He also earned an M.A. in Korean Studies at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of International Studies in Seoul, having won a Woojung Scholarship to study there.

Dr. Shapiro’s published and ongoing research lies at the intersection between economics and public policy. More specifically, he attempts to understand how national innovation systems are formed and contribute to sustainable development, how climate change is addressed and impacted by relevant policies and political forces, and how communications from politicians, scientists, and the media impact both of these areas. In political science, these concerns fall under the purview of science, technology, and environmental politics (STEP), information technology and politics (ITP), and East Asian politics.

Dr. Shapiro’s work has been published in The Pacific Review, American Politics Research, Environment & Planning, International Journal of Public Policy, and Scientometrics among others. He teaches courses in research methods, public policy, political economy, and Asian politics for the Department of Social Sciences. More information can be found at www.understandgreen.com.

Abstract

This paper considers the extent to which the Northeast Asian countries — China, Japan, S. Korea, and Taiwan — are collaborating as a legitimate group to produce “green” R&D. Forcing a revision of traditional institutional analysis, such collaboration efforts can overlap with existing policies of regional coordination, but they can also pave the way for future, formal coordination efforts. Employing a mixed methods approach which triangulates data based on expert interviews as well as green patenting output over the last 33 years, it is confirmed here that the presence of the Northeast Asian environmental regime is strongly associated with the development of green R&D among countries in the region. It can be further confirmed that Northeast Asia is on the cusp of becoming a genuine counterweight to the existing dominance of the U.S. and Western Europe.

Introduction

INTER-COUNTRY R&D COLLABORATION is one of several forms of international coordination and collaboration, but it stands apart because the end product is not always tangible, the direction of transfers between/among collaborating countries is not clearly delineated, and the degree to which the benefits may accrue to collaborators is uncertain. Research on international R&D collaboration, largely exploratory in nature, has grown steadily over the last few decades (Wagner, 2005). To build on this foundation, this research project targets R&D collaboration between/among four active producers and suppliers of high-technology: China, Japan, South Korea (henceforth, “Korea”), and Taiwan. Transfers abroad of such technology, specifically green technology , are extremely important for the Northeast Asian region: a large share of green technology originates in Northeast Asia, shown in Figure 1 for 2009 and 2010, and, under ideal conditions, this technology’s dissemination can mitigate GHGs and other airborne pollution, reduce water pollution, reduce energy costs, and ultimately improve economic growth. To what extent, though, are these four countries collaborating with each other to generate this technology? Can we attribute such connections to tangentially-related policies and institutions, or is it a result of superseding regional concerns? Finally, and regardless of its causes, to what extent is Northeast Asia emerging as a singular hub for green R&D, offering a legitimate response to the dominance of North America and Europe?

Figure 1. Log-transformed Green-patent Counts by Country, 2009 and 2010

■ Note: Details about these data are provided in “Methods,” below.

Models of international coordination have become more nuanced, building on existing research which focuses on formal and informal agreements, institutional design, or transnational advocacy networks; however, study of formal institutions has overshadowed and even precluded deeper examinations of informal institutions such as the relationships among scientists and researchers. The overarching premise here is that these non-state actors are significant in the fostering of environmental regimes and for coordinating formal policies among nations. These are not necessarily the same individuals that can be found within Haas’s (1990) “epistemic communities” — i.e., politically empowered, knowledgeable, and motivated around shared causes and beliefs — but rather they are assumed to have attributes consistent with Andonova et al.’s (2009) and Abbot’s (2012) theories of transnational institutional complexity, namely that scientists act in ways similar to other non-state actors (e.g., Abbott et al.’s (2013) private transnational organizations) in creating bridges across countries in order to respond to environmental problems. Yet, scientists and researchers are ultimately constrained and/or facilitated by domestic and cross-national policies.

The past 40 years, particularly the last fifteen to twenty years, have yielded unprecedented efforts at cross-national environmental coordination, impacting how we approach two-level games in international negotiations (Barkdull & Harris, 2002; Gallagher, 2009). At the regional level, and when considering green R&D in particular, additional factors must be considered: fewer players make it easier to address collective action concerns, neighbors are more willing to share intellectual property because of pollution’s negative externalities, and economic and political relationships between neighbors are strengthened. We also know that environmental regimes at the regional level are not easily created (Keohane & Victor, 2011) and that, in Northeast Asia in particular, there are confounding factors such as varying levels of pollution, environmental institutions, and inadequate capacities to deal with pollution. Historical tensions and concerns about hegemony are also likely to affect collaboration within the region. For example, the East Asian Acid Deposition Monitoring Network’s (EANET) attempts to address the pollution blowing out of mainland China; yet, China can claim that EANET challenges its national sovereignty. Similarly, Korea has attempted to limit Japan’s dominance by protesting against the placement of EANET’s network center in Japan. China can also refuse to share large portions of its pollution and environment-related data (Brettell, 2007). These tensions are acknowledged here as well as the fact that, and in spite of them, the region has coordinated management, sufficiently funded national environmental agencies, strong regional nongovernment organizations, and a host of multilateral organizations (Shapiro, 2014; Solomon, 2007).

To better understand the nexus of informal and formal institutions, presented in the following pages is a platform for understanding environmental regionalism in Northeast Asia as well as a methodology for quantifying the output of R&D collaboration. Building on research of environmental coordination in Northeast Asia which outlines the region’s science and technology-based epistemic community (e.g., Shapiro (2014)), two datasets are triangulated, one which assesses environmental regionalism via international R&D collaboration through a stakeholders approach and another which quantifies R&D collaboration through patenting networks based on the USPTO’s environmentally sound technologies index. Accounting for both datasets allows us to verify for the first time whether the tendency for Northeast Asian collaboration is undercut by a weak collaborative record or whether it is inclusive, forward looking, and responsive to political influences. This approach enables us to describe how the connections across countries have developed and to identify which country partnerships have the greatest impact on technological growth. Before examining this formally, the phenomenon of international green R&D collaboration must be framed by theories of international coordination in order to understand country-level incentive structures and how the variables of analysis should be conceptualized.

Theories of International Coordination

Economic Growth and Technology

We know definitively that R&D collaboration plays a key role in economic growth. Such findings build upon other work that uses R&D-based endogenous growth theory (e.g., Aghion and Howitt (1992), Helpman (1993), and Romer (1990)) to explain continuing steady growth in high income, highly capital-intensive countries for which the convergence properties of neoclassical growth theory would otherwise suggest declining growth rates over time. Several attempts have been made in growth accounting to extend the neo-classical model in ways that come close to capturing R&D collaboration effects on growth, showing that, for example, green innovation benefits both the producing sectors’ comparative advantage and their current output (Fankhauser et al., 2013). None, however, makes explicit use of international R&D collaboration, much less R&D collaboration about environmental technologies.

In addition, there are spillover effects from foreign manufacturing R&D on domestic productivity for the OECD countries (including Korea and Taiwan) (Park, 2004). Local R&D has also been found to be a function of R&D expenditures in foreign industries (W. Keller, 2002b), and technology spillovers decrease significantly with greater geographic distance (W. Keller, 2002a), perhaps due to the importance of face-to-face interaction in technology diffusion (Gong & Keller, 2003). We know that collaborative (non-green) R&D as measured by patents has boomed in recent years and with significant effects on higher incoming earning countries’ growth residual (Shapiro & Nugent, 2012), so one should assume that environmental technology generation arising from international R&D collaboration positively influences both technological growth and the environment...(Continued)